Take a Stand for Land

As naturalists, birders are attuned to the sweep of landscape about us in ways other citizens may not be. We know that an unheralded, ragtag woodlot surrounded by subdivisions may support the county’s last Wood Thrushes. The ravine with an empty shopping cart at either end and a moldering mattress halfway down the trail hosts wintering sparrows—and maybe, just maybe, a great Christmas Count warbler. The flood-killed cottonwoods that most locals view as deadwood we know to be vital to nesting Tree Swallows. The new cell tower that has filled a hole in the communications network may, we fear, extinguish a migrating Wilson’s Warbler or Virginia Rail some September night.

We have come to understand, as well, that the plant communities, landforms, treetops, and even the open skies we search for birds are increasingly affected by decisions, or non-decisions, made by people who may not yet embrace the values we hold dear. We may feel powerless to affect the future of Borneo’s old-growth, yet we certainly can go to bat for our local patch by letting our elected leaders, city managers, political appointees, and fellow birders know what we care about.

A few years ago, the city I live in purchased a parcel of ranchland, which cannot be developed because it is zoned as floodplain. Last year, with wildlife values in mind, they ran a fleet of big yellow earthmovers over it, creating a set of scrapes (broad shallow excavations that reach slightly below the water table) that will hold at least a little water much of the year. It was uplifting to know that the dirt-spattered Tonka Battalion was, in this case, not destroying wetland, but enhancing it.

As the last leaves fluttered from the alders and the Dunlin and Green-winged Teal began scouting for feeding sites, I felt that there was something amiss with this project. The site hadn’t yet begun to “come around” in the way I’d expected. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until I paused and took a good long look. And then I figured it out.

Standing in and about the margins of the largest scrape were two dozen cattle. As I watched, one of them lifted its tail and did its unsavory thing. The others, hooves dripping with goop, were post-piling countless holes the size of tea saucers into the mud as they splashed through the shallows of the enhancement pool. In ten minutes, I had seen enough. Though I ordinarily keep a low profile on environmental issues, I knew I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I didn’t try to affect better management of this site, a mere two minutes from home.

Realizing that I was pretty amped-up when I arrived home, I tried to curb my emotions. First I did some belly-breathing and then I held our old calico cat, Corina, on my lap as I flipped open the phone book and dialed the number for the city’s Environmental Services department. Getting only a woman’s voice on an answering machine, I identified myself, explained what I had seen, suggested the consequences of unchecked trampling by cattle, and asked for a call-back. Then I posted what I had seen, together with my concerns, on a regional birders’ listserv, knowing that it would reach many naturalists who regularly passed by the site. Bucking my zest for overwriting, I attempted to put as many ideas into as few words as possible. And I re-read it before I sent it.

I was gratified that a woman from Environmental Services returned my call. We discussed the issue. I explained that, although I understood the role cattle can play as “agents of vegetation management,” they can be an equally potent destructive force, damaging, setting back, and eliminating riparian and wetland vegetation, as well as trampling the hapless invertebrate communities living in the mud.

She as much as nodded over the phone as she informed me that, in the wake of my call, the city had arranged with the rancher who held the grazing lease to fence out his cattle in the future. She further explained that the beeves would only be allowed around the scrapes during the summer, when their grazing will help keep emergent vegetation from becoming established. I acknowledged that this was an acceptable compromise, and I thanked her.

Many other phone calls — inspired by my post to the listserv — reached her office, raising her awareness of a community of birders who will now pay close attention to livestock activities at this site. We will be watching for that fence to be built, as well as for the “trespass animals” that may blunder back onto the site during fall, winter, and spring. In the meantime we’ll enjoy watching the enhancement scrapes mature mostly free of cattle.

A famous scientist—Kelvin, I believe — once wrote that we can’t know about something until we measure it. Today, adrift in a galaxy of land-use data sets largely persisting only as soulless “zeroes and ones” in offices lit by banks of fluorescent lights, we’ve got to do better. While honoring that important maxim, I would suggest, as well, that we can’t save something unless we care about it, and we can’t care about it until the thought of its loss spurs us to do something other than reach for another sip of coffee.

All that was required on our end was to pick up the phone, and to press SEND. Good things happened. A public employee was educated, an understanding was forged — and next winter is looking a lot brighter for those Dunlin and Green-winged Teal.