Name: Looking Back – Looking Forward; Alaska National Wildlife Refuges – Purpose, Place, & Promise Homer
Start: 2026-01-20T17:00:00-09:00
Location: Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge

$Looking Back \u2013 Looking Forward; Alaska National Wildlife Refuges \u2013 Purpose, Place, & Promise Homer$

Join us at the Refuge Visitor Center in Homer for a watch party for Robin West's talk on his 30 years of working and adventuring on Alaska's refuges! Robin will be speaking at the Kenai Refuge in Soldotna, with another watch party in Anchorage and you can zoom from anywhere with the link and details here: https://alaskarefugefriends.org/1-26-robin-west/
From the seat of a canoe on a solo trip on the Yukon River, Robin West had time to think back on a long life and career in Alaska. Out of that experience came a book and this talk. It’s part adventure tale and part reflections on the development of national wildlife refuges in Alaska from someone who was there in that heady time when the refuges were just being created and expanded. Come hear retired biologist and former manager of Kenai and Izembek National Wildlife Refuges Robin West tell stories about his thirty-year career in Alaska as he shares the highlights of his first book, "Thirty of Forty in the 49th: Memories of a Wildlife Biologist in Alaska". The book captures Robin’s memories as he reflects back in time while on that solo canoe trip on the Upper Yukon River and into the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge in 2019, forty years after he first visited the area. These stories will be interwoven with adventures from that solo paddle including paddling through, and camping along the Yukon during a massive wild fire.
Learn More and find zoom link at https://alaskarefugefriends.org/1-26-robin-west/