The 27th Alaska Bald Eagle Festival begins the second week of November. This is the first in-person festival in two years and KHNS’ Brandon Wilks spoke with the Raptor Center’s Education Manager, Ali Gustavson, about all of the events Haines residents can expect this year.
[Ali]
Yeah, so our festival is running next week from November 9, which is a Wednesday to the 12th, which is a Saturday. And we have a bunch of different events. Actually, starting on Tuesday evening, we’ll be at the brewery at five o’clock, with one of our live avian ambassadors, only the peregrine falcon, and we will be there selling tickets to the banquet if you haven’t gotten your banquet, gotten your banquet ticket yet. And also kind of chatting about all things festival what we’ve got going on. On Wednesday, we’ll have our official opener where prior to that we’ll have a local conservation organization fair. So folks can come learn about all the different organizations that are in town helping to conserve the bald eagle and its habitat, which is part of our mission. And then after that, we have a really fantastic presentation from Taconic Watershed Council. So that’s Wednesday night, Thursday evening, we’ll have our local artists Fair, which we’ve done in the past and also bird talk, which is kind of our riff on the popular local event river talk. So people have seven minutes to share stories about birds and what they mean to them.
And then on Friday, we will be doing a guided Eagle walk out on the Preserve, and we will have a shuttle running from the foundation out there. So tickets will be kind of required for that but locals are welcome to just meet us out there. And all of these events are free for locals. So if you have the time, feel free to join us. And then Saturday we have we have to rehabilitated Eagles coming down from Anchorage. So we’ll be releasing those out on the preserve. And that evening, we’ll have our banquet. So, banquet tickets for locals are $35 for adults and 15. For Kids. We’re selling those all week and we have Mallow, nista Catering is catering for us. And Joe Gerner is playing music for us. And we’ll have raffles that will be out all week as well that we’ll be drawing at the banquet.
[Wilks]
Ali recommends visitors to the preserve dress warmly and reminds everyone that banquet tickets can be purchased online at Baldeagles.org. For more info email Ali at education@baldeagles.org or call 766-3094.
