The People of The Peregrine Fund: Jadn Soper

There’s a large crowd seated in the stone amphitheater outside our headquarters at the World Center for Birds of Prey, and all eyes are focused on a small dark dot low on a distant hillside. After a few playful bounces in pursuit of grasshoppers, the dot leaps into the air, and as wings spread, the dot resolves into our ambassador Swainson’s Hawk Griffin. She closes swiftly on the assembled guests, effortlessly climbs the hillside, and finally swoops so low over the heads of the crowd that more than one audience member’s hair dances in the wind from her wingtips. It’s an awe-inspiring moment for many. And for the trainer on whose glove Griffin has landed, these are the moments she lives for.

“My goal is to connect people with wild animals in wild spaces,” says Jadn Soper, a Raptor Specialist II at the World Center for Birds of Prey (WCBP), our education facility located on the same property as our headquarters in Boise, Idaho. Griffin is one of 22 avian ambassadors on our WCBP education team, which includes owls, falcons, vultures, eagles, and other hawks. Jadn and the other staff and volunteers of the team conduct three or more education programs for guests every day, but the job involves much more. “We do all the husbandry, all the training, a lot of the basic veterinary care, cleaning and maintenance of the aviaries, and more,” she explains. It’s work that the team takes very seriously. “Our quality of work is their quality of life.”

Jadn’s route to her current position at The Peregrine Fund was somewhat circuitous, including stints doing dog training in the United States, wildlife rehabilitation in Ecuador, various wildlife research projects in Mexico, and completing a bachelor’s degree from England’s University of Salford in 2021. After volunteering as a high school student with our Raptor High program in 2016 and as a Docent two years later, her first paid position with the organization was as our Sales Coordinator in 2021. She became a Raptor Specialist the following year, and a 2024 promotion gave her her current title.

Perhaps the path to conservation work was inevitable, notes Jadn, sharing that she grew up as an outdoorsman, starting to hunt and fish at the age of four. But she also points out that she realized early on that not many people had gotten as much experience in the natural world growing up, which helped push her down the path to environmental education. “You can’t protect something if you don’t know it exists,” she says. “Bringing my passion and love for wildlife to people who maybe have not had the chance to experience it yet is a great way to get people excited to conserve birds of prey in their own lives.”

Like all of our projects, sound science is a cornerstone of the team’s work. “We do a lot of behavior science during every single one of our training sessions with the birds,” Jadn explains. “We also do a lot of educational and developmental science so that we can make sure that all of our education fits the needs of our audience, regardless of age and ability. We are helping connect people to birds of prey wherever they are, and science and education go hand in hand with helping to conserve species worldwide.”