Denver Holt
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Denver Holt is a wildlife researcher and graduate of the University of Montana. He is founder and president of the Owl Research Institute, a non-profit organization located in Charlo, Montana. He is a field researcher and believes in long-term field studies as the primary means to understanding trends in natural history. Denver has researched owls in North and Central America, and in 2000 he was named Montana's Wildlife Biologist of the Year by the Wildlife Society of North America.
Since 1978 Denver's particular focus has been researching owls and their ecology. He has published about 80 papers and technical documents, including three species accounts for the Birds of North America project. He was also the team leader for the Strigidae (owls) family species accounts for The Handbook of the Birds of the World, Volume 5, covering 189 species of the world's owls. Denver has co-authored, with two elementary school teachers, two children's science books on owls: Owls: whoo are they?, and Snowy Owls. His Snowy Owl research was featured as the cover story for National Geographic Magazine in December 2002. In 2006, he was a chapter author on owls for the book Arctic Wings, highlighting the birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The foreword was written by former United States President, Jimmy Carter. The book has won the prestigious National Outdoor Book Award for Design and Artistic Merit.
Denver's research has been acknowledged in many television programs on ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN Science News. His research has also been featured in Audubon's Up-Close series, Disney, PBS's Bird Watch, and David Attenborough's Life of Birds, among others. His research on Snowy Owls has been featured in documentaries for National Geographic Explorer, NHK Natural History Unit of Japan, and the Norwegian Broadcasting Company Natural History Unit. Recently, his research has been the focus of the British Broadcasting Company's (BBC) new documentary series, Frozen Earth, the sequel to the highly acclaimed Planet Earth series. He also has been a keynote speaker at several major bird festivals in the United States.
When not researching owls, Denver leads private natural history tours, and guides part-time for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours.