Help Protect a Globally Important Bird Area from Improperly Placed Wind Turbines

CITIZEN CALL TO ACTION:  Help BSBO's efforts to stop a wind turbine proposed for a Globally Important Bird Area in Ottawa County

We hope you will email your Name, City, State, Zip, and email address (with "RWE" in the subject line) to: ResponsibleWindEnergy@bsbo.org to support our efforts on the troubling issue outlined below. Your name will then be included along with an official letter that BSBO, along with other conservation organizations, will be submitting to local, state, and federal officials.

Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO) has learned of proposal to place a large wind turbine at the Camp Perry National Guard facility on the Lake Erie shoreline, just a few miles east of the world-famous birding hotspot of Magee Marsh.   The Camp Perry facility itself includes wooded areas near the Lakeshore that provide important stopover habitat for migratory songbirds.

The site also lies directly between the Darby Unit of Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge and the Navarre Marsh, site of BSBO's primary songbird banding research station, where we have banded more than 500,000 songbirds over the last 20+ years.  In other words, the site lies deep within one of
the most sensitive migration stopover habitats in the Midwest.

BSBO filed for all relevant documents from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources under the Sunshine Law. The documents show that both our federal and state wildlife agencies have listed multiple reasons why this site is not suitable for wind turbines.  Reasons cited in these documents include, but are not limited to:
- The site's proximity to an active Bald Eagle nest
- The high number of Bald Eagles that have been documented using the area
- The site lies deep within a highly sensitive area for migrating passerines, waterfowl, shorebirds, and raptors
- The site poses high potential for impact on the Federally Endangered Kirtland's Warbler and Piping Plovers
- The site is part of a National Audubon designated Important Bird Area
- The site is part of a Partners In Flight designated Globally Important Bird Area
- The site is part of a Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network designated area of Regional significance for shorebirds

* And most recently, in their comments evaluating the final Environmental Assessment (EA), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Ohio Department of Resources basically shred the EA, collectively calling out close to 50 erroneous and misleading statements in the document.

Based on this information, and the amount of data that BSBO's research has gathered to demonstrate the volume of migratory birds that rely on the stopover habitat in this region, BSBO's position is that this site presents high risk for migratory birds and it is irresponsible for the federal government to allow its installation on this site.

I want to be absolutely clear: BSBO is not simply saying no to wind energy; rather, we have expressed a sincere willingness to work with any and all stakeholder groups to develop alternate sites and alternate technologies that will allow us to support Responsible Wind Energy.  We are asking for your support of our position. Since the facility is part of the Department of Defense, there are some issues that we fear could allow them to proceed with this project in spite of the overwhelming comments against it expressed by the state and federal wildlife agencies.

Citizen action can have an enormous impact, and I encourage you to sign on to our efforts.  We met with National Audubon this week and their Chief Scientist has agreed to write a letter of support for our efforts, stressing the importance of responsible placement of wind turbines in Important Bird Areas.  We've issued this call to action to every conservation organization in Ohio (and a few in neighboring states).  Adding the names of concerned citizens will put those in charge of administering this project on notice that our very active birding community is watching, and that we hold them up to the highest possible standards as a federal facility. Here, in this area that is of global significance to migratory birds, we must ensure that the habitat these birds depend on is given the utmost consideration.

If you are willing to include your name in support of our position, please email the following information to: ResponsibleWindEnergy@bsbo.org  and please put RWE in the subject line.

Name
City, State, Zip
eMail address

Thank you,

Kimberly

Changes at National Audubon

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: It’s not easy being the president of the National Audubon Society (NAS). This is a very large and very decentralized organization, with hundreds of local chapters that often act autonomously. Many of these chapters have been in existence for a very long time and have developed very strong personalities, so to speak, and in some cases there has been friction between the chapters and the national office for decades. Then there’s an identity problem: the media may think of Audubon as a birdwatching organization, but the birdwatchers think of it as an environmental organization. The truth is that it’s somewhere in between, an environmental org focused on birds, wildlife, and their habitat. The president of this group has to juggle all kinds of conflicting personalities, and at the same time, try to save the world.

I have worked for National Audubon (not as an employee, but continuously on contract) for 25 years now, first as associate editor of American Birds (which they published until the late 1990s) and more recently as a field editor for Audubon Magazine. For the last 15 years of that time, the president of Audubon has been a dynamic, hard-working individual named John Flicker. Despite being named for a bird, he’s not mainly a bird person. He was trained in law and he did impressive things with The Nature Conservancy before coming to NAS. But when the situation called for it, John would get out there in the field with the Audubon troops, pursuing bird sightings with zest and energy. He did everything with zest and energy, and he accomplished a lot in his time at Audubon.

Left: John Flicker. Right: Northern Flicker. Illustrations not to scale.

The news this week was that Flicker is stepping down as NAS president, going on to do different things. Already, some people are offering assessments of his term. John was a major believer in the value of Audubon Centers, and he pushed an initiative called a “2020 Vision” that aimed to open a thousand such centers by the year 2020. I don’t think the initiative is on track to hit that one thousand mark (after all, that would be about one per week for 20 years), but many Audubon Centers have opened and they are already having a fabulous positive influence -- for example, here in Ohio, the Grange Insurance Audubon Center, right in the heart of Columbus, is perfectly situated to reach a large urban audience and teach them about nature. Many other centers are also up and running. So even if the effort falls short of 1,000 by 2020, it would be totally wrong to call it a failure.

I’ve heard a few people comment that NAS lost members during John Flicker’s term. That’s true in a narrow sense, but the fact is that the majority of membership organizations and publications have declined in the last 15 years, as people have gotten more and more of the same benefits from joining online communities. I think it’s a credit to Flicker that Audubon is still as strong as it is.
National Audubon is launching a search for the next president. But in the meantime, big news for birders is that the interim head of NAS will be Dr. Frank Gill, Audubon’s senior scientist. Frank is a world-class ornithologist and a remarkable dynamo who has done so many things that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Like some of the very best ornithologists, he started off as a rabid kid birder, and he went on to do research that took him all over the world: studying sunbirds in Africa, white-eyes and seabirds on islands in the Indian Ocean, hermit hummingbirds in South America, as well as landmark studies of warblers and chickadees in North America. He headed up the bird department at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia for several years before going to Audubon as senior vice-president for science. While at the Academy, he started project VIREO (the world’s foremost scientific collection of bird photos) and launched the Birds of North America project (now online at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology). He was responsible for the worldwide list of standardized bird names of the International Ornithological Congress. His textbook on Ornithology, now in its third edition, is a standard college text.

I could go on about what he’s done. But mainly I wanted to add a personal note. Frank has been a friend of mine since the late 1980s, when I worked for him at the Academy for a couple of years; and in addition to being a great ornithologist, he’s also a great birder, and tons of fun to hang out with. At the Academy and later at the Audubon offices, a familiar sound was Frank’s booming laugh echoing down the hallway. Conversation with him is always a dizzying experience; he comes up with enough new ideas in a day to keep a normal person occupied for a year. A day in the field with him is a combination of perceptive birding, deep insights, and crazy jokes, in about equal measures. Frank Gill is brilliant, dynamic, down-to-earth, and totally dedicated to birds. He’s only the interim president of Audubon, but while he’s in charge there, the organization is definitely in good hands.

The press release from NAS is here: