Subject: [Tweeters] "Bird Year" (on bike) about to take flight!
Date: Jun 16 18:41:09 2007
From: Stewart Wechsler - ecostewart at quidnunc.net


Thank you so much for doing this "big year" by bicycle. I have been
concerned for years about how much cost the environment has incurred from
people driving and flying all over to see nature. For some years I didn't
drive and didn't have a car in part to avoid being a part of that problem.
After some years of seeing all of my environmentally concerned friends using
their cars and commercial planes to see all of the cool plants and animals
while I was mostly seeing the relatively few species and habitats in the
Seattle area by bus, bike and foot and by getting a ride from others in
group trips I broke down and joined them and got a car. I still rationalize
that since my trips are substantially to study habitats so that I can apply
that to restoration and educating others about ecosystems and to collect
seed and salvage plants that might be bulldozed to do restoration that they
will have a net benefit after the costs of my car and all of its direct and
indirect effects on the environment / ecosystems are taken into account, but
now that I've gotten into the car mode I use it for more than study trips,
seed collection and salvage.

I would like to see a lot more people doing their "big years" on bicycles.
Maybe there should be some kind of equation to subtract species seen by for
every 100 miles traveled using modes of transportation that in so many ways
end up harming the very birds and other wild plants and animals that we are
so excited to see.

Stewart Wechsler
Ecological Consulting
West Seattle
206 932-7225
ecostewart at quidnunc.net

-Advice on the most site-appropriate native plants
and how to enhance habitat for the maximum diversity
of plants and animals
-Educational programs, nature walks and field trips
-Botanical Surveys

-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Madsen [mailto:birdyearken at yahoo.ca]
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 12:01 PM
To: Tweeters Listserve
Subject: [Tweeters] "Bird Year" about to take flight!


Hello all - our biking/birding family is about to start cycling south from
the Yukon on our "Bird Year" adventure. We are doing a couple of
presentations in Washington:
- 7 pm on August 3 at the Dungeness River Center near Sequim
- August 15th at Ocean Shores (place TBA!)
Please come by and say hello if you are in the area or if you see us
cycling.

We'll be checking our website email regularly (www.birdyear.com) so please
let us know if there are interesting things to look for in the first half of
August in Washington.

By the way - we just did an interview about our journey on CBC radio's
Sounds Like Canada. It will be played between 10 am and noon on Wednesday,
June 20th - if you can get CBC from where you live. You can also listen on
the internet - there is a link to CBC radio on our website's homepage.

cheers and we hope to meet some of you along our way!
Ken, Wendy and 15 year old Malkolm (who's idea this was!)



Ken Madsen
website: www.birdyear.com
email: birdyearken at yahoo.ca



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the
boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail
--
Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 269.8.9/832 - Release Date: 6/4/2007 6:43
PM