MEET STEPHANIE ASHLEY: THE FALCONER PUTTING BIRD WELFARE FIRST
That standard is not just a talking point. Under Stephanie’s leadership, the Education Center earned USDA certification on its very first inspection, a distinction that many facilities struggle to achieve. TPF also adopted its first formal animal welfare statement, a foundational document that now applies to ambassador birds across programs. These aren’t small accomplishments. They’re the result of years of deliberate, disciplined work by someone who holds herself and her team to an exceptionally high standard. What makes Stephanie’s perspective so distinctive is the breadth of experience behind it. She began her career at Tracy Aviary in Utah, built expertise through years of professional bird training, and carries a credential that a relatively small percentage of people in the world hold: she is a master falconer. Falconry is one of humanity’s oldest partnerships with a wild animal, a tradition that demands extraordinary patience, skill, and mutual trust. It is also a field historically and overwhelmingly dominated by men. Stephanie is a female falconer, and that matters. Not because her gender changes the way she reads a bird or flies a hawk, but because representation in specialized, tradition-bound fields sends a message. It tells the next generation of young women interested in raptors, in wildlife, in conservation that there is a place for them at the highest levels of this work. TPF is proud that she carries our tradition in falconry forward in so many ways. Her approach to the public-facing side of the Education Center is just as thoughtful as her approach to bird care. Research consistently shows that direct contact with an ambassador animal makes people more inclined to support conservation. But Stephanie knows that getting people to care requires more than just proximity to a bird. She and her team have leaned into a different strategy: empathy. Stephanie Ashley carries forward the falconry tradition at the heart of TPF— channeling the craft’s deep reverence for raptors into a welfare- first philosophy and a belief that empathy is a powerful tool for inspiring the next generation of conservationists.
TPF Complete Conservation™ Pillar
There’s a moment that happens regularly at The Peregrine Fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho. A visitor—maybe a child, maybe a skeptical adult who’s “not really a bird person”—comes face to face with one of the raptors at the Education Center. Something shifts. The bird looks back. And suddenly, conservation isn’t an abstract concept anymore. It’s personal. That moment doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because of Stephanie Ashley and her team of Thought Leadership By putting bird welfare and human empathy at the center of every public encounter, Stephanie Ashley is redefining what a conservation education program can be and proving that the next generation of conservationists is won one visitor at a time.
dedicated staff members and volunteers. As Curator of Birds at TPF, Stephanie is the architect of every raptor encounter at the Education Center and the philosophy behind it. She oversees a team of three staff, a dedicated crew of Raptor Care volunteers, a veterinary care plan, and 20 ambassador birds representing some of the most magnificent raptors on the planet. Every routine, every training session, every interaction with the public flows through a single guiding question she has built our program around.
“Welfare ends up being our true north,” she says. “ Every decision we make involving ambassador birds has to run through the filter of: is this good for the bird? ”
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