Local zoologist, botanist, and wildlife manager, Ortwin “Orty” Bourquin presents “The Wild Side: The Kalahari Desert.” He will share beautiful photos taken in the Kalahari Desert and educate us about this region and it’s wildlife. This event is geared toward adults.
While Orty was educated in South Africa, he made Stillwater County his home in 2003. He began studying the local flora and, in 2007, “as a volunteer for the USDA (Natural Resources Conservation Service), have established a field herbarium representing flora of the Stillwater County (Montana), with 1172 specimens collected, preserved, mounted and labeled by the end of 2008. Was awarded the ‘2007 Recipient of the Montana Earth Team Volunteer Award’ by the Natural Resources Conservation Services division, USDA” for this work.”
Orty has donated “a wet and dry collection of local invertebrates (numbers unknown but well over 500 specimens) to the Montana Entomology Collection (Associate Professor and Curator Prof. M. J. Ivie) Bozeman.”He has been collecting bees locally since 2019 “for a 15-year project on bees of Montana (Montana State University,Bozeman), with 12100 invertebrate specimens (of which 30-40% were estimated to be bees) submitted in 2022, and 26000 specimens in 2023. Previous years (2019-2021) catches were not counted.
”He was awarded ‘2007 Recipient of the Montana Earth Team Volunteer Award’ by Natural Resources Conservation Service, Earth Team Volunteer Program; United States Department of Agriculture, for establishment of a dried, mounted collection of 600+ species of plants (mostly named) of Stillwater County for educational and reference use.
”He has “received recognition for biological work by being chosen as Associate Member of the Transvaal Museum (1993), a member of the IUCN/SSC Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group (1991 – to date) and by having several species named after me (a fairy shrimp, Streptocephalus bourquini; a lizard, Scelotes bourquini; and two earthworms, Proandricus bourquini)”
Prior to living in Montana, “he carr[ied} out fieldwork, either alone or in a team, surveying for the presence and abundance of animals in the wild, and to use the information gathered to make recommendations on biodiversity conservation and management in South Africa, UAE, Seychelle, and Saipan.
He is also a world traveler who has taken beautiful photographs of animals and scenery, some of which have been on display and sale at the Two Rivers Art Gallery in Big Timber since 2009.As the photo of himself that Orty provided to promote this event attests that this presentation should be humor-filled along with being educational.
*Details of Orty’s life were taken from his extensive CV.
