Honorees

Cindy Adams Dunn has served as the Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources since 2015.

During her tenure, Ms. Dunn has helped position Pennsylvania as a leader in land conservation, outdoor recreation, green practices, and public land management.

Ms. Dunn’s non-profit conservation and advocacy roles include serving as the president and chief executive officer of PennFuture, state director of Audubon Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania coordinator for Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, and as an environmental educator for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Past DCNR roles included serving as Deputy Secretary of Conservation and Technical Services from 2007-2013, where she led Conservation Landscape program and oversaw the grant program, which provides $30-$60 million annually for conservation and recreation throughout the commonwealth.

Other leadership posts include Director of the Bureau of Recreation and Conservation and Director of the Office of Education, Communications, and Partnerships.

Daniel Klem, Jr., Ph.D., D.Sc. has been selected to receive the Pennsylvania Audubon Council’s “Walt Pomeroy Conservation Award.”

Over the past 44 years and continuing, he has dedicated his life to studying, writing, and teaching about the threat that sheet glass and plastic pose to birds. No other scientist has comprehensively studied and published research results documenting and preventing the lethal threat that human structures pose to birds. In his 1990 papers “Bird injuries, cause of death, and recuperation from collisions with windows” and “Collisions between birds and windows: mortality and prevention”, he calculated that between 100 million and 1 billion birds are killed, annually, in the United States alone, by flying into windows.

His research has influenced the design of buildings, not least the Niagara Falls State Park Observation Tower, on which he was a design consultant. He holds several US patents relating to windows design. He is motivated by available and growing evidence that bird-building collisions are an important wildlife conservation, building industry, and animal welfare issue for birds and people worldwide.

He was nominated by the Lehigh Valley and Presque Isle Audubon Societies!

Jim Bonner, Executive Director of the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania (ASWP), received the Walt Pomeroy Conservation Award in a presentation ceremony in Villanova on August 7, 2025. The award is in the form of a limited edition framed print of a Peregrine Falcon donated to the Council by the Lycoming Audubon Society. The print had originally been commissioned by Lycoming Audubon to help fund its program to reintroduce the Peregrine Falcon as part of several sites in the Commonwealth. Lycoming Audubon took the lead in the Peregrine reintroduction project in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The award presentation took place as part of an informal luncheon attended by several Chapter and Bird Town Pennsylvania leaders.

Jim’s nomination was unanimously endorsed by the Pennsylvania Audubon Council Board. The award recognizes Jim’s leadership throughout his twenty-one-year career at ASWP in addition to his leadership in conservation efforts in the greater Pittsburgh region. Under his watch, ASWP expanded their Nature Center at Beechwood Farm and established two additional Centers in Allegheny and Butler Counties. He has been a leader in the protection of the Little Buffalo Creek Watershed and Important Bird Area. His environmental work with economic justice communities has been inspiring and important. Jim was part of the coalition that first established “Lights Out Pittsburgh.” More recently, Jim has contributed to the adoption of several environmentally friendly ordinances by the Pittsburgh City Council including one that permits property owners to use native plants and no longer threatened by a restrictive “weed ordinance” that discouraged homeowners in the past. Another recent highlight is ASWP’s active role in the expansion of the Bird Town Pennsylvania Program. The work of Jim and his staff at ASWP established many new Bird Towns in Allegheny and Butler Counties. Finally, Jim Bonner is counted among the cadre of chapter leaders that spearheaded the work to reestablish the Pennsylvania Audubon Council. Jim has served as the Council’s Treasurer over the last five years.