Feb. 15, 2023

Contact Rick Kyte at 608-796-3704 or rlkyte@viterbo.edu

“WHY DO BIRDS SING?” VIRTUAL PRESENTATION CELEBRATING ALDO LEOPOLD FEB. 27

LA CROSSE, Wis. – The Viterbo University D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership will host the virtual presentation “Why do Birds Sing?” by University of Wisconsin Professor of Behavior Neuroscience Lauren Riters at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 27 on Facebook Live at https://www.facebook.com/viterboethics.

This talk is being held in celebration of Aldo Leopold, a conservationist, forester, philosopher, educator, writer, and outdoor enthusiast who is considered by many to be the father of wildlife management and of the U.S. wilderness system. In 2004, Wisconsin designated the first weekend in March as a time to honor Leopold and his conservation legacy. According to the Leopold Foundation, that legacy is “to inform and inspire us to see the natural world as a community to which we belong.” A La Crosse event is planned each year by representatives of local environmental and conservation groups.

Leopold wrote and spoke of listening for the first bird songs of a dawning day as in his essay, “The Choral Copse” in the Almanac. But almost a century later the question of why birds sing is still a puzzle according to Riters.

Riters received a PhD in psychology from the Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Program at Bowling Green State University, where she studied how birds migrate and return home from distant locations. This was followed by postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Liege in Belgium and at The Johns Hopkins University where she began to study how and why birds sing.

This presentation is part of the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership spring lecture series. For a full schedule of events, visit www.viterbo.edu/ethics.

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