Aurora Potts grew up in Atlanta, GA watching wildlife on nature programs. She interned at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo and at Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on their GIS manatee temperature probe project. She received a B.A. in Environmental Studies with a self-designed Film Studies concentration and a minor in Visual Arts from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL. She worked as a video editor and production assistant for KPG Creative in Mason, OH, and decided the corporate world was not for her.
She relocated to Seattle, WA, began working as an environmental educator at Discovery Park, and pursued an M.A. in Zoology from Miami University and Woodland Park Zoo’s Advanced Inquiry Program. She’s been published in The Journal of Wildlife Rehabilitation for her research on owl behavior. She’s trained and performed with free flighted birds of prey at Stone Zoo in Boston, MA, and worked as a wildlife rehabber at Progressive Animal Welfare Society in Lynnwood, WA.
In an effort to see untethered wildlife in their natural habitat, she pursued river guiding on the Wenatchee, Deschutes, Sauk, Methow, Skagit, and Nooksack Rivers in the Pacific Northwest, the New and Gauley Rivers in West Virginia, and the Colorado and Green Rivers in Utah. One of the luckiest moments of her life was on St. Patrick’s Day, 2019, when a lynx crossed North Cascade Highway 20 and sat down in the middle of the road right in front of her van just south of Goodell Creek Campground in WA.
Debt from maintaining a sprinter van inspired her to become a federal employee as a biological science technician for Ashley National Forest, Idaho Fish & Game, and finally, the Burns District Bureau of Land Management. She was recruited by Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center’s staff, Dr. Roger Sheley, to help manage High Desert Partnership’s native seed project. While their 501c3 tax-exempt pending status time was rejected and now extended, she formed her own business, AWP Marketing & Photography.
She loves the abundance and diversity of birds of prey in Harney County and hopes to help people enjoy what she considers to be an American Safari, right here in Burns, OR. She has a coonhound mix and border collie mix named Cheddar and Gnocchi who happily live on a ranch and enjoy watching the local raptors hunt on the property. She looks forward to improving vendor selection and increasing visitor engagement at Crane’s Nest Nature Store.
