We moved here in the 80's, birded Frager a lot as we lived in Kent then. I
really have to work to get around and it's really sad. In fact I've not
tried in many years. I can't imagine what it would feel like to Bud, as
difficult and sad this area makes me, add twenty years or more to that!
I saw more Goshawks in Spain than I've ever seen here!

On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 1:26 PM Rob McNair-Huff <rob.mcnairhuff at gmail.com>
wrote:


> Thank you for this email, Bud. That longer perspective is too often

> missing from the conversations about the impact of development decisions on

> nature. It sure makes me miss what I never actually had the possibility of

> experiencing myself...

>

> Rob

>

>

>

> --

> Rob Huff ---------- Tacoma, WA

> Author of Washington Disasters (Globe Pequot, 2006), Birding Washington

> (Falcon Publishing, 2004) and Insider's Guide to the Olympic Peninsula

> (Globe Pequot, 2001)

> www.whiterabbits.com

> On Mar 11, 2019, 12:56 PM -0700, Bud Anderson <falconresearch at gmail.com>,

> wrote:

>

> I began my hawkwatching career in the Kent Valley in the mid-sixties and

> lived on Frager Road for several years.

>

> Back then, it was all farmland that often flooded, that is until they

> turned the Green River into a drainage canal.

>

> In those days it was hawk heaven, you could find goshawks just south of

> Renton and gyrs around Kent with fair regularity, along with everything

> else. I still vividly remember seeing my first Black Merlin not far from

> the Smith Brothers dairy.

>

> Starting with the building of the Southcenter "supermall" and followed by

> the invention of rapidly constructed, tilt up concrete warehouses, an

> abundance of cheap farmland and eventually the huge Boeing facility, the

> valley was essentially destroyed for both wildlife and agriculture over the

> next two decades and I was happy to eventually move north to the Skagit.

>

> Ironically, I learned of a study written back in the 1930s, although I

> have never seen it, that recommended that the Kent Valley be preserved as

> farmland to provide Seattle with fresh produce and dairy to feed the

> burgeoning population of King County.

>

> Prophetic.

>

> But industry won that battle.

>

> The last time I returned there a year or so ago, I actually got lost and

> disoriented among the multitude of bland, rectilinear industrial concrete

> warehouses.

>

> I seldom hear about this massive loss of precious, irreplaceable habitat

> any more.

>

> But some of us still remember it as it was, a local treasure to be mourned.

>

>

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--



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