IMMERSIVE BIRDING & NATURE WORKSHOPS
Explore the Wild Side
Education Through Exploration
Since 2006, Wild Planet Nature Tours has offered immersive birding and natural history experiences in Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Mexico, and Guatemala. Founded by renowned naturalist Denver Holt, who also established the Owl Research Institute, our tours blend expert guidance with authentic wilderness encounters.
Our philosophy remains unchanged: we create experiences we'd want to participate in ourselves. Every tour balances scientific knowledge with the joy of discovery, maintaining small group sizes of no more than 14 participants to ensure personal attention and minimize our environmental impact.
ABOUT US
Denver Holt
Guide and Co-Owner
Denver Holt is a wildlife researcher and founder and president of the Owl Research Institute and Wild Planet Nature Tours, located in Charlo, Montana. His particular focus since 1978 has been researching owls and their ecology. He has published numerous papers for scientific as well as popular publications and is currently the team leader for Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s Snowy Owl species account. He has conducted research in North and Central America. He has led numerous birding and nature tours throughout the U.S., Central America, and Africa including some for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. He is an avid naturalist with additional interests and knowledge that include insects, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, plant identification and geology. The Montana Chapter of the Wildlife Society named Denver as Biologist of the Year for 2000. Denver’s research has been published in many academic journals, as well as an authority who has been acknowledged by the media, including a cover story for National Geographic Magazine in Dec. 2002 and featured in the New York Times in 2011. His work has been the subject of many television bits on all the major networks, as well as featured on Audubon’s Up-Close series, PBS’s Bird Watch, Disney, and David Attenborough’s Life of Birds, and the film The Magic of the Snowy Owl, among others. His research on Snowy Owls has been showcased on documentaries for National Geographic Explorer, NHK Natural History Unit of Japan, and the Norwegian Broadcasting Company Natural History Unit. His Snowy Owl research has been the focus of the British Broadcasting Company’s (BBC) documentary series, Frozen Earth, a sequel to the highly acclaimed Planet Earth series. In 2011, Denver worked closely with a PBS documentary film crew featuring the breeding ecology of the Snowy Owl at his research site in Barrow, Alaska. Denver has also been the keynote speaker for many major bird festivals in the United States and gave a TEDxBozeman talk in 2023.
Matt Larson
Guide
Matt Larson is a graduate of the University of Montana. He has worked as a research biologist with the Owl Research Institute since 2008. He is a lifelong naturalist and avid outdoorsman. His research, focused primarily on North American owls, has afforded him the opportunity to travel and work throughout western Montana and Alaska. Matt has published many professional papers. He has also been a co-author for the Northern Pygmy Owl, Birds of North America (BNA) species account. Matt shares his passion for field biology, natural history, and long-term research through several mediums: he has given several papers at professional meetings, numerous public lectures, and field workshops, and has served as a natural history guide. His publication describing Survey Techniques for Short-eared Owls is being widely applied across the west. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Missoula, Montana.
Jeanna Clifford
Director of Tour Operations and Co-Owner
Jeanna is a 3rd generation Montanan who grew up in the Mission Valley on a certified organic farm, where she enjoyed working outdoors, hiking trips, and climbing mountains. She later attended a private university in East Texas where she studied Mass Communications and Graphic Design. She travelled afterwards to South Africa, Namibia, the U.K., and Egypt. After working for a non-profit advertising agency and then a litigation support firm in Dallas, TX, she began freelancing and consulting while raising her young boys. She returned to Montana in 2012 and worked for an Arts & Entertainment newspaper and continued to provide marketing and website consulting for small businesses. She came on board at the Owl Research Institute in 2023 as the Director of Communications. She lives in Polson, MT with her husband and one younger child, while her two older boys are in college. She enjoys the outdoors, seeing raptors in the wild, travelling and experiencing new places.