Colville is a small town in northeastern WA and in this case the sewage
ponds are mostly just visited by a few local birders and a few Spokane
birders who know the routine. (But also perhaps increasingly by WA county
listers from other parts of the state.) As is often the case checking in at
the office and following directions is all that is required. So I'm not sure
there is a great need for this here vs. say a popular birding site in the
much more heavily populated Puget sound or Vancouver area. I suppose it
could be done but I suspect WOS would be the only WA organisation able and
willing to pursue such a thing if it was determined to be necessary.

thanks, Charles.

On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 1:53 AM, Michael Price <loblollyboy at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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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> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
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>
>


--
Charles Swift
Moscow, Idaho <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow,_Idaho>
46?43?54? N, 116?59?50? W
email: chaetura at gmail.com
skype: charles.swift
google voice: 208-991-2473
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