PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE: MARCH 2010By Tim Manns |
It was an apt coincidence to be reading “Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness” during the 4 days of the Great Backyard Bird Count last month. Audubon members are more attentive than most people to what author Lyanda Haupt calls the “more-than-human world,” and the Count encouraged us all to be even more watchful and then report what we saw. If you think about the larger meaning of pursuits such as birding, have a look at Crow Planet.
Haupt, once employed by Seattle Audubon, is an urban dweller who wears binoculars and a 10X hand lens wherever she goes. “We are the human species, living in culture, bound by nature,” she writes. “When we allow ourselves to think of nature as something out there, we become prey to complacency. If nature is somewhere else, then what we do here doesn’t really matter.” As birders, we know that the wild is all around us wherever we live and does not simply exist elsewhere. Haupt’s prime example is the crow, a wild native bird occurring in the most artificial settings and reminding us that where we live is inseparable from where wild life exists – and that what we do at home affects the larger, more-than-human world.
Haupt sees gaining an awareness of the wildness around us as more than a source of enjoyment. “Developing as a naturalist, a knower of nature, is arguably one of the most critical tasks for modern humans on the planet Earth, ... In a time of ecological crisis,” she writes, “the place of the naturalist has become necessarily multifaceted. Naturalists are people who know what’s going on. They know what creatures live where, which are thriving and why, and which are dying and why. They know their earthen places well and can, by example and action, speak eloquently for their ecological needs. Modern naturalists must be both biologically and politically savvy, which can be a rude awakening. How nice it would be to just watch warblers and make little yellow watercolors of them in our notebooks. But I believe strongly that the modern naturalist’s calling includes an element of activism. Naturalists are witnesses to the wild, and necessary bridges between ecological and political ways of knowing.”
National Audubon and its chapters all across the U.S. offer social opportunities, field trips and programs, and also ways to be an activist on behalf of the more-than-human world with which we share the planet. Awareness of this larger world and enjoying that awareness confers on us an obligation to act on the wild world’s behalf. Being such an activist can mean expressing ourselves on political issues affecting wildlife habitat. It can mean managing our property to ensure that it supports wild animals and plants, for example by applying Backyard Wildlife Habitat Program guidelines or the ideas in Russell Link’s “Living with Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest.” It can mean contributing funds and time to organizations that study, protect, or restore wildlife and habitat. Being an activist on behalf of wild life can mean participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count and other citizen science projects. It can mean doing all of these things. Lyanda Haupt’s essential idea is that by being attentive to the life of the wild around us wherever we live we answer part of the universal question, “How should I live?”
GOT WOOD DUCK BOXES?
If you have Wood Duck boxes on your property or are maintaining any somewhere else, you can report their use and productivity to Rone Brewer (Washington Waterfowl Association). Rone is maintaining a database of this information, including the 20 years worth gathered by Skagit Audubon member Don Bottles and friends at the Wylie Slough, Skagit Wildlife Area. There’s a particular reporting form to use, which you can obtain by contacting Tim Manns: bctm@fidalgo.net or 360-336-8753.