About JB

Joe “JB” Billings—A lifelong, naturalist-at-large and 21st century cave man—has extensively explored, studied, written about, and photographed the wildlands of SE Arizona, along with other areas of the west and Mexico. Whether on an all-day long bushwack hike and botanical expedition in the remotest corner of the Santa Catalina Mountains, rowing a primitive watercraft made from reeds out into the Sea of Cortez, fashioning stone spearpoints and primitive weaponry, as a self-taught flintknapper, or stalking and tagging thousands of beautiful monarch butterflies as MonarchQuestAZ, he is equally at home in the outdoors, all year-round. 

JB tagged over 6,000 butterflies during six field seasons as MonarchQuestAZ, while tracking down at least 100 tagged monarchs from all tagging programs along the California coast and in the Mexican monarch preserves, including a dozen of his own tags. Prior to that, he excelled at designing and installing landscape projects singlehandedly as The Landscaping Artist, winning the first place-residential/professional award multiple times in the regional Xeriscape Contest. JB’s award-winning projects have been featured in Tucson HOME, Tucson Lifestyle/Home & Garden, the Arizona Daily Star, and other publications.

JB lives in Vail, Arizona and has remained true to his roots as a pure, ‘born naturalist’ and never faltered from that path. He continues to direct long-acquired experience and knowledge gained from fieldwork, studies and numerous expeditions into the current platform of writing/photography, wildlands restoration plantings, sustained-living projects and native pollinator plant demo-gardens. When not in the field or engaged in projects, JB can be found trail running in the nearby hills and washes, playing fingerstyle guitar, or absorbed in meditation crafting flaked stone points in his favorite flintknapping chair.