Session overview:
“As nocturnal migratory birds follow the light of stars that may no longer exist, they depend upon the dark to shroud epic journeys that stitch the world together. The light we throw into that darkness in the name of illumination are like daggers, the shards of photons confusing maps lain down by evolution. How sad to find the crumpled corpse of some sparrow or the still wings of a warbler, whose life ended because of the manufactured light that led it to fly into the window glass it believed was night.”
J. Drew Lanham is a cultural ornithologist, naturalist, educator, and writer using robust science, artful essays, and evocative oratory to color the conservation conversation. As a storyteller, poet, and passionate advocate for accessibility and stewardship, his writing is in praise of wandering and wildness and in protest against all not justice or joy.
Under One Sky will close out with remarks from Ruskin Hartley and conference host Michael Rymer, and J. Drew Lanham will conclude the event with reflections on our nighttime environment.
Global closing
Global closing keynote speaker
Cultural ornithologist, naturalist, educator, poet, and memoirist
J. Drew Lanham
J. Drew Lanham is a cultural ornithologist, naturalist, educator, and writer using robust science, artful essays, and evocative oratory to color the conservation conversation. He is the author of three books: The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature (2017); Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts (2021); and Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves (2024). Among his honors, Lanham has received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant (2022), the Dan W. Lufkin Conservation Award from the National Audubon Society (2019), the Rosa Parks and Grace Lee Boggs Outstanding Service Award from the North American Association for Environmental Education (2016), the E. O. Wilson Award for Outstanding Science in Biodiversity Conservation from the Center for Biological Diversity (2020), and the Thoreau Award in 2024. He served as the Poet Laureate of Edgefield, South Carolina in 2022. Lanham is a Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Master Teacher at Clemson University. He lives with his family on a farm in the upstate of South Carolina.
Host
Michael Rymer
DarkSky Communities Program Manager
Closing remarks
Ruskin Hartley
DarkSky International CEO and Executive Director
Join the workshop:
This session will begin at 3:30 p.m. EST on Saturday, November 7 (20:30 UTC, Nov 7). To join, use the main Under One Sky 2026 Zoom Link provided to registered attendees.
New York
03:30 a.m.
São Paulo
05:30 p.m.
London
08:30 p.m.
Cape Town
10:30 p.m.
Dubai
12:30 a.m.
New Delhi
02:00 a.m.
Beijing
04:30 a.m.
Sydney
07:30 a.m.
