Subject: [Tweeters] mitigation/restoration objectives
Date: May 28 22:07:29 2009
From: BobnBernie - bobnbernie at comcast.net


We have noticed the same thing and become more frustrated as time goes by.
Each year, as the vegetation gets thicker and taller, there is less and less
to see and less area for the waterfowl and shorebirds. The only good news is
that most of the fast growing vegetation is deciduous and you can see a
little when the leaves drop in the fall.

It appears to us that someone has convinced the architects of these areas
that if the birds can see a human they will leave and never return. Why else
would they go to such trouble to exclude people?

We spend a lot of money providing these mitigation areas. It is to bad that
they can't find a way to make them duel use for longer than the first year
or two..
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Bletsch" <garybletsch at yahoo.com>
To: "Brien Meilleur" <brienm at live.com>
Cc: "tweeters tweeters" <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 6:58 PM
Subject: AW: [Tweeters] mitigation/restoration objectives



Dear Brien and Tweeters,

I echo Brien's concerns. I recently broached this very topic in regard to
the McCorquedale Road mitigation project, in Skagit County just outside
Burlington's city limits. Last year, the place was swarming with shorebirds.
Peregrines and Merlins would show up. A broad variety of waterfowl swam
there. Now it's a sapling plantation. A typical visit there today yields one
or two species of common ducks, the odd Killdeer, a Red-winged Blackbird or
two, and maybe some Starlings and Robins.

Harrumph.

Yours truly,


Gary Bletsch Near Lyman, Washington (Skagit County), USA
garybletsch at yahoo.com


--- Brien Meilleur <brienm at live.com> schrieb am Fr, 29.5.2009:

> Von: Brien Meilleur <brienm at live.com>
> Betreff: [Tweeters] mitigation/restoration objectives
> An: tweeters at u.washington.edu
> Datum: Freitag, 29. Mai 2009, 2:25
>
>
>
> #yiv790402801 .hmmessage P
> {
> margin:0px;padding:0px;}
> #yiv790402801 {
> font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana;}
>
>
>
> Hello Tweets,
>
> I was glad to read Dennis Paulson's note of concern a
> few days ago about recent changes at Bottle Beach State
> Park. I've had the same reaction for some time now
> and am hoping that we can build on Dennis's
> comments for a debate on this topic on tweeters.
>
>
>
> Since moving back to Seattle in 2004, and
> revisiting many of my favorite birding locations of 30 years
> ago (esp. in the Kent Valley,
>
> Bottle Beach, Magnuson Park), and often in areas with
> intense urbanization pressure, it's just not clear
> to me what the objectives are for the increasing number of
> wetland mitigation/restoration projects that I've
> seen at these sites and in Western Washington generally
> (e.g., there's another one being put in between
> Everett and Bellingham visible from I-5, and I just found a
> new one on 124th Street at Forbes Lake in
> Kirkland). All of these projects seem to fit
> a common pattern: relatively steep banks where
> ponds/pools have been created, massive plantings of Salix
> (willow) saplings, heavy use of bark chips, and dead logs
> and stumps strewn around willy-nilly, with some
> placed vertically with horizontal branches stuck in
> drilled holes of the main trunk. I try to imagine what
> these projects will look like in 10 or 15 years and I come
> up with images of large, impenetrable willow
> thickets with a few dead trunks sticking up through them,
> and with the pools/ponds frequented primarily by common
> ducks and Canada Geese. If these projects are being
> designed to restore and/or recover species, which species?
> Or do they have other objectives? Perhaps a person in
> the wetland mitigation/restoration area in Western
> Washington could help me answer these questions,
> because at the moment I can't conclude that they
> will be of any substantial recovery (or refugium) help to
> the avian species that could arguably benefit the most from
> wetland mitigation/restoration projects in
> Western Washington: shorebirds.
>
>
>
> In this regard, (as a conservation professional, a
> birder, and a taxpayer) I would very
> much appreciate knowing who developed this increasingly
> adopted model, what are its objectives, who was and
> continues to be responsible for promulgating (and
> accepting) it, and what can be done by individuals
> and/or groups (e.g., Audubon, WOS) to provide the input that
> could potentially make such projects more effective for the
> species that could most benefit from them.
>
>
>
> Brien Meilleur
>
> Lake Forest Park, WA
>
> brienm at live.com
>
> Insert movie times and more without leaving
> Hotmail?. See
> how.
>
> -----Integrierter Anhang folgt-----
>
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>



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