It's Black Birders Week—Here's Why Celebrating Black Scientists and Naturalists Matters

BlackAFInSTEM, a community of Black scientists, kicked off the inaugural Black Birders Week from May 31 through June 5. What started as a group chat organized by birder Jason Ward evolved, in a matter of mere days, into a week-long celebration of Black naturalists. “It is a movement that was started out of pain, and its goal is not necessarily pleasure, but uplifting,” Alexander Grousis-Henderson, a zookeeper and member of BlackAFInSTEM, tells Mental Floss. “We want people, especially our community, to come out of this stronger and better.”

The movement started after a video of a white woman harassing and threatening Christian Cooper, a Black birder, went viral. As part of Black Birders Week, you can follow along as professional and amateur Black naturalists, scientists, and outdoor enthusiasts share their expertise and experiences and celebrate diversity in the outdoors. Throughout the week, members of BlackAFInSTEM are facilitating online events and conversations like #AskABlackBirder and #BlackWomenWhoBird.

Though Black Birders Week was created for Black nature enthusiasts, everyone is welcome to participate. Follow along the #BlackBirdersWeek hashtag, or check out the @BlackAFInSTEM Twitter account. Ask questions, engage with their posts, or simply retweet the scientists to help amplify their voices.

Scroll through the hashtags on Twitter and Instagram, and you’ll find a stream of Black naturalists honoring their love of the outdoors. “We want kids to see our faces and attach them to the outdoors, and we want our peers to recognize that we belong here too,” Grousis-Henderson tells Mental Floss.

Not only does Black Birders Week make space for Black birders to share their passion, it’s also a way for the community to raise awareness of their unique experiences and address systemic racism in nature and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). According to Grousis-Henderson, it’s an opportunity to foster a dialogue within the birding community; to prompt conversations about diversity within the outdoors.

“We wanted to draw on what we know about the diversity of biological systems and bring that perspective to social systems,” Grousis-Henderson says. “A diverse ecosystem can stand up to a lot of change, but a non-diverse ecosystem, one lacking biodiversity, is easy to topple.”

The movement goes beyond birding. Alongside Black Birders Week, Black outdoorspeople are sharing their experiences of what it’s like to be a Black person in nature—a space where they’re far too often made to feel unwelcome and unsafe. Organizations like Backyard Basecamp, Melanin Base Camp, and Outdoor Afro continue to foster the Black community's connection to nature.

"Black Birders Week is an opportunity to highlight joy and belonging, to showcase expertise, and to remind people that Black people have been inextricably connected to nature for generations," Yanira Castro, communications director for Outdoor Afro, tells Mental Floss in an email. "It is a celebration of that relationship."