Our History
One day in 1994, twelve like-minded individuals, with expertise in a wide variety of professional fields, gathered around a kitchen table in Albuquerque, New Mexico to found a nestling organization that would become Hawks Aloft. Our vision focused on protecting wild birds and their habitats. Our goal was to act with transparency and collaborate with others to build a network that would conduct research on all species of birds and foster future leaders by providing educational programs for youths of all ages. In 2013, we incorporated raptor rescue into our mission in response to overwhelming requests for help with injured birds. We continue these efforts today, in New Mexico and beyond, throughout the Southwest.
Our Approach
We are proud of our commitment to collaboration. We work with federal and state governments, tribal authorities, non-government agencies, businesses, and schools within New Mexico in order to expand our reach and support one another’s goals.
We work in partnership with these various entities to provide meaningful service, education, and support. We believe that conservation, research, and education are all important approaches to the preservation of New Mexico’s birds and their habitats and that this aim cannot be achieved without active participation in our community.
Become a Member
Board of Directors
NATE GOWAN
Chairman of the Board
Terry Edwards
Treasurer
KRISTIN BROWN
Director
DR. LINDA CONTOS, DVM
Director
armando najera
Director
Dr. Christine Fiorello, DVM
Director
Staff
Gail Garber
Executive Director
As an artist, writer, and executive director of Hawks Aloft Gail has written three books and published numerous articles in many fields. Back in 1988, she met and fell in love with an educational Red-tailed Hawk. She began working as a volunteer for a local conservation organization, and it wasn’t long before she became a staff member. Today, she thoroughly enjoys all aspects of her work, from working in the field and education programs to caring for a large cadre of non-releasable education birds. In her other life, she is a professional quilt maker (Gail Garber Designs) and often travels to teach and lecture on methods she has developed. Her leisure time is often spent outdoors, searching for birds and more birds, but she and her dogs also enjoy the peace and quiet of their mountain home.
David Buckley
Avian Surveyor
David grew up in the wilds of the New Jersey shore, exploring the beaches, rivers, ponds, and woods of the area (which is to say, the real Jersey Shore). His love for birds and nature started there and he has pursued it ever since. In the 1980’s he settled in the Pacific Northwest, where birding became his central pursuit. He is a graduate of the Seattle Audubon Master Birder program and was a board member of the Washington Ornithological Society.
Since moving to New Mexico in the late 1990s, David has had the good fortune to be involved with Hawks Aloft in a number of ways, including housing and handling various raptors, writing and editing, and conducting breeding-bird surveys. He looks forward to getting out in the field each time and is grateful to be assisting in the collection of data to monitor birds in the Middle Rio Grande Valley.
Susan Coulter
Project Manager
Jacy Dowler
Field Technician
Born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Jacy has held an intense fascination with animals since childhood. This evolved into a passion for birds and their conservation as she worked toward earning a B.S. in Biology, and her exposure to the vibrant research community present at the university motivated her to pursue an avian-centered career. Over the summer of 2025, she assisted with fieldwork and passerine surveys in the Sandia mountains, and conducted bioacoustic research at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge. In her free time, Jacy enjoys birding and wildlife photography, as well as making art and reading about our natural world.
Trevor Fetz, Ph.D
Research Director
Trevor grew up in northeastern Oregon and received a B.A. in English from Whitman College. Upon realizing that his baseball career was not going to advance beyond college, and that he didn’t exactly want to teach English, he decided to pursue an interest in nature. He received an M.S. in Environmental Studies from Southern Oregon University, and it was during that time he discovered an obsession with birds. After completing his M.S., he spent several years working for the Oregon Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit studying Spotted Owls in southwestern Oregon and two years as the project coordinator of a MAPS station for the Medford, Oregon, district of the Bureau of Land Management. He completed his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at New Mexico State University in 2010.
Jerry Hobart
Project Manager
Born in Ohio, Jerry grew up in New Mexico, where he received a B.S. in mathematics from New Mexico State University. During a 20-year Air Force career he also found the time to study meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. The most exciting part of his weather service was as an Aerial Reconnaissance Weather Officer. This included doing the reconnaissance for the Apollo 15 recovery and also participating in seventeen typhoon penetrations in the western Pacific. Later he earned an M.S. in Systems Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology. Upon returning to New Mexico, he became interested in birds, especially raptors. That led him to a raptor identification seminar led by Gail Garber; his love of raptors began then. He served as one of the founding board members of Hawks Aloft and has been instrumental in raptor surveys along the levee and back roads of the Rio Grande and Estancia valleys that began in 1995 and continue today. Outside of birding, his interests include woodcarving and benchrest shooting.
Tom Mayer
Avian Surveyor & Project Manager
Tom Mayer grew up in suburban Cincinnati and was educated in Ohio and Pennsylvania. After receiving his PhD in chemistry at Penn State he embarked on a 35-year career in materials and process development for microelectronics fabrication. He retired from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque in 2009. Following retirement, he developed an interest in Geographic Information Systems technology, and for several years worked as a volunteer GIS analyst for The Nature Conservancy. He and his wife, Edel, got hooked on birding while living in the woods of North Carolina and observing birds that showed up at their feeders, their behavior and relationship to the local environment. After meeting Gail Garber in 2015 on a birding trip in Costa Rica, he began to get involved in various projects with Hawks Aloft including a study of traffic noise effects on birds in the Rio Grande bosque, raptor nesting surveys, a waterfowl survey at the Valles Caldera National Preserve, and songbird surveys in the Rio Grande bosque.
Evelyn McGarry
Membership Coordinator &
East Mountain Raptor Rescue Coordinator
Evelyn has long looked to Jane Goodall as her hero. While growing up, she watched every wildlife television show she could and collected newspaper articles about the plight of the world’s wildlife. Her employment history includes working as an admissions supervisor with California's Great America theme park, a store manager at Crown Books and Lechter’s Housewares, a bookkeeper with a printing company, a file clerk with Levi Strauss, and in the last 25 years before retirement, as an eligibility worker with the County of Santa Clara. She began volunteering with Santa Clara County 4-H while working full-time and raising a daughter. She continued to volunteer after retirement with her neighborhood homeowners association, retirement association, local senior center community garden, and with Hawks Aloft. Her current role at Hawks Aloft involves being the membership coordinator, doing educational outreach, mews cleaning, raptor handling, and raptor rescue.
Abby Mills
Senior Intern
Abby Mills was born and raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and moved to New Mexico with her family at age 7. Having grown up in a family of animal lovers, she was surrounded by pets from a young age. Her earliest memories involve animals, spending time outdoors, and visiting her family’s farm. During these visits, the peaceful routine of feeding the squirrels, birds, rabbits, and deer shaped her love of wildlife and instilled her lifelong interest in wildlife and appreciation for nature.
Abby earned her Associate of Science in Biology from Central New Mexico Community College in 2022 and is currently completing her Bachelor of Science in Biology at the University of New Mexico, expected to graduate December 2026. Her studies have focused primarily on wildlife ecology and physiology. Her interests have continued to expand from her initial focus on mammals and reptiles to developing her knowledge and experience with birds. Abby enjoys spending time outdoors, observing wildlife, and continually learning more about the animals and ecosystems around her.
Andrew Orr
GIS Specialist & Biologist
Andy began contributing GIS support to Hawks Aloft in 2024, assisting with mapping and spatial analysis for the organization’s raptor research and conservation projects. Before joining Hawks Aloft, he volunteered with the Peregrine Fund’s California Condor reintroduction project in northern Arizona, where his passion for wildlife and bird photography deepened while documenting one of North America’s most endangered birds. He holds a degree in Environmental Geology and a master’s in Geographic Information Systems from the University of Redlands. Since 2011, Andy has worked as a GIS analyst at Argonne National Laboratory. In addition to raptor photography, he occasionally teaches photography on Antarctic expedition trips and enjoys large-format film photography, scuba diving, and caving.
Click here to contact Andy.
Heather Rissi
Education Coordinator/Writer
Heather grew up enjoying the beautiful Arizona desert. She worked as a veterinary technician and graduated with Bachelor’s in Journalism and Veterinary Science. During that time, she also volunteered and worked for a program called Raptor Free Flight at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. It was there that Heather discovered her passion for conservation education and birds of prey. This led her to pursue graduate work that included several classes abroad. She studied Buddhism and conservation in Thailand and human and wildlife conflicts in Kenya. She completed a Masters in Zoology with a focus on Mexican gray wolf conservation education.
Along the way she met her husband in Northern Arizona and then moved to Oregon where they started a family. She recently moved back to the southwest to enjoy the warmer weather and be closer to her extended family. After returning to the southwest, and prior to starting at Hawks Aloft Inc. she volunteered for another free-flight raptor program, Birds on Sky, in Lakeside, Arizona. In her spare time, Heather enjoys writing, photography, gardening, and learning skills needed to develop her family’s homestead.
Liz Roberts
Educator/Naturalist
Lizzie grew up in Kent, England, travelled the world, and ended up in Albuquerque where she started her family. She has an adventurous spirit, a creative mind, and a love for the outdoors that she incorporates into her teaching. A wonderful educator, with decades of experience homeschooling her children, teaching at Wildlife Rescue Inc., Lizzie has rejoined the staff at Hawks Aloft. Liz began work here as an educator 16 years ago before taking a break to pursue her other passion: pottery. Now an accomplished professional potter, she has found more time to return to Hawks Aloft as a part-time educator. Lizzie currently houses several of our Avian ambassadors who are very lucky to be in such good hands. We are very happy to have her rejoin our team. Be sure to look out for LizRoberts.Art at any New Mexico craft show.
Molly sutton
Educator/Naturalist
Growing up in northeastern Ohio, Molly Sutton has always had a love for animals and the outdoors. Throughout her life, hobbies like travelling, horseback riding, hiking, and more pushed her towards her future career. After earning her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science from Virginia Tech, she jumped into the field of environmental education working as an educator in coastal Virginia, central Pennsylvania, and Andros Island in The Bahamas. Wildlife education has become her passion. In addition to her work with Hawks Aloft, she is pursuing a master’s degree in Wildlife and Fisheries Resources through Clemson University.
Although Molly’s interests include wildlife of all sorts, birding has become a special comfort during her years in the field. Present across every biome, birds have been a constant joy through every relocation and life change. Having grown to love birds in her personal life, she is excited to make these creatures a focal point in her work and further combine her loves of education, conservation, and wildlife. Outside of work, she enjoys outdoor recreation like hiking, running, and scuba diving, as well as reading, cooking, and doing crafts at home with her pet cat.