Subject: Re: The birder's voice or lack thereof
Date: Oct 10 13:36:06 1997
From: Michael Price - mprice at mindlink.bc.ca


Hi Tweets,

Eric Greenwood writes:

The Wild Bird Trust was formed by several local birders with the objective
of saving Maplewood Flats and restoring its habitat. It took ten years of
fighting but the end result has been worth it (Grays Harbour folk take heart).

Its originator and driving force is Dick Beard, not a name that shows up on
the list, but is worth remembering as one of the the most
conservation-committed persons of integrity and hard work one will ever meet.

>The Vancouver Natural History Society has a section with a core group of 50
>birders that have done much to affect plans for habitat in, and around
>Vancouver.

Where was this core at the dog meeting, Eric? Or at Boundary Bay meetings
that the hunters pack with their own? Or at the Fraserview Golf Course when
the last known Western Screech-Owl nesting site was needlessly chainsawed by
our Park Board? The same Park Board the VNHS refuses to criticise beyond the
most timid way because it's afraid of jeopardising its Stanley Park Nature
House deal with the same Board? Maybe the your core kept getting the address
wrong. Maybe that's why it's continually AWOL. Oh, please, Eric, you offend
both history and intelligence here.

>The VNHS was one of the groups that lobbied hard to get funding
>restored for the Creston Valley Wildlfe Area and the birder's group raised
>quite a bit of cash to help out.

While Sea Island disappears, Reifel reverts back to waterfowl production,
snag tree and brush (forest understory and edge nesting and feeding habitat)
removal in all the parks during nesting season continues without cease, and
dogs overrun every habitat in town without effective criticism. Creston,
being hundreds of kilometers away, is good, credit where it's due, but
acting locally with effectiveness...?

>Unfortunately, there are some BC-based subscribers to Tweeters that don't
>want to acknowledge the work of these organizations and that don't belong
>to them.
>
>The best advice; don't sit and complain, get out and do something about
>something that you care about.

There is also at least one BC-based subscriber to Tweeters who belonged to
the latter organisation for nearly fifteen years who was highly motivated,
dedicated, competent and innovative and whose reward after many years of
highly popular, dedicated and innovative service as its Alert operator was
to be removed by that organisation's leadership elite in a political
maneuver so shabby and squalid that even his worst enemy felt sorry for him,
and one that lost that society a lot of friends and potential contributors
when they saw how it treated people who didn't toe the party line. One who
was in its leadership for at least twelve years and who knows firsthand the
frequent hiatuses between official pronouncement and actuality, and has seen
up close the real nature of the elite's internal consensus of its own worth
and importance and its actual competencies and performance. I wouldn't go
there, Eric.

>Yeah! Wouldn't we all. Please post the magic formula when you find it!

Being in the local organisation's leadership was *most* instructive. Based
on my experience these are the things I'd suggest any healthy organisation
requires: vision, motivation, efficient goal- and high quality
service-oriented rather than committee-process-oriented, clear goals,
inclusiveness, the search to put the right people with the appropriate
competencies in the right positions in the absence of an initiative-stifling
committee structure and bureaucracy, rewards, appreciation, support,
critical and self-critical judgement, management rather than administration,
transparent decision-making, fairness, lack of elitism, courage to confront
difficulty, the explicit and serious eschewal of ego- and office politics, a
strong sense of duty, service and responsibility to the membership's actual
desires and needs rather than to the executive's consensus and wants, the
ability to listen, particularly to criticism and self-criticism while not
identifying a dissenting opinion as punishable disobedience and disloyalty,
to learn (particularly from the example of others doing something right, and
from mistakes); it requires humility rather than arrogance or hubris on the
part of the leadership; above all, it needs its leadership to have integrity
and honor: Junius--a pseudonym--a 18th-Century political comentator, perhaps
put it best: The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate neither
advises nor supports arbitrary measures. As I said, my tenure in the VNHS
was instructive; I learned a great deal about the qualities which form a
healthily effective and responsive organisation. And applied them where I could.

Any organisation that is internally healthy, externally focussed and
effective will have no trouble attracting and keeping its best members. Any
organisation which loses membership had better beware: its members are
voting with their feet about how well or badly that organisation is doing
its job. Has the VNHS been able to stem its membership drain yet, Eric?

Michael Price We aren't flying...we're falling with style!
Vancouver BC Canada -Buzz Lightyear, Toy Story
mprice at mindlink.net