Butterfly Day is an all-day environmental festival featuring live music, a live butterfly house, a live beehive, environmental and community partners, as well as local jewelry, tile, art and native plants for sale, face-painting, children’s crafts, and food and drinks for sale—all at the historic Topanga Mountain Mermaid property in the Santa Monica Mountains.
This year, in addition to a focus on butterflies and other pollinators, the Butterfly Day organizers will broaden their theme of wildlife conservation to include raptors and reptiles. The local experts at Raptor Events have been invited to provide a series of live animal presentations as one aspect of the day’s offerings.
Raptor Events first visited several years ago for a much-loved event at Topanga Elementary School called Raptor Day. Over the years, Raptor Events has broadened their work to include wildlife education as well as themed events, festivals, and specialty avian services—such as relocation of peacock populations from urban to more rural settings. Jonathan Gonzalez, the founder of Raptor Events, has a powerful story of an early passion for exotic animals beginning in his teen years. He has much experience working with local zoos where he gained practical skills in handling animals and learned about their history, habits, diet, physiology, and behavioral patterns. A natural educator with a warm, engaging energy, Jonathan works with his team to share each animal with an engrossedthe audience, inviting them to look, listen, touch, and interact with the animals while learning about their unique qualities as well as challenges they face in nature. Raptor Events has a mission of protecting the natural world and sharing a passion for exotic animals with their clients. The agency directly supports wildlife conservation through their educational and entertainment presentations. This year’s Butterfly Day and Raptor Events partnership will be an incredibly exciting educational event for all to look forward to. More at www.butterflyday.org
