Hi Tweets,

I've never understood why so many birding organisations don't pro-actively
contact sewage lagoons, landfills, sod-farms at the
institution-to-institution level and pre-arrange birder access and supply
appropriate do-and-don't signage. They don't much do that here in Vancouver
BC either, except---after some harrowing near-escapes for access owing to
some changes in security protocols among other reasons to shut birder access
down---at Iona Island's shorebird-rich treatment ponds. There's at least one
sod-farm in South Delta I wouldn't have minded paying a few bucks for
pre-arranged access to see close-up the distant shorebirds like Long-billed
Curlew and Buff-breasted Sand and Upland Sand and the two golden-plovers and
god knows what else cake-walkin' about on its far-from-the-road reach.

The Vancouver Landfill in South Delta and its many tens of thousands of
gulls is another case. No birder access whatsoever. Forbidden. Why? No-one
really knows. But if the president of the local birding organisation got on
the phone to the bureaucrat responsible for landfill operations and arranged
some safety and behavioral protocols, who knows? Suddenly birders might have
access to a gull-rich site. Why has this never been attempted? Again, no-one
knows.

And that's from thirty years ago. And, for pete's sake, Britain is full of
such arrangements. That's one of the reasons the Brits find so much. Access.
Here, The idea of pre-arranged access seemingly has little traction.

Birders can't expect automatic access just 'cos we're birders and nice
people in pursuit of a harmless hobby ("The meek shall inherit the Earth.
May we have it now, please?"): sometimes we'll run into heartless
bureaucratic bastards who don't give a toss about what birders or anyone
else may want, whose billions of DNA base-pairs reiterate the amino acids of
N-O and who listen only to other organisations at the presidential level.

To me, it's always been a total no-brainer. Start making those calls.

And, for those organisations which have taken a pro-active role, well done,
you.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
loblollyboy at gmail.com

Every answer deepens the mystery.
- E.O. Wilson
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