 |
|
 |
| ||
|
Stressed-Out Birdwatching
Gaggles of geese, bevies of swans, braces of ducks and carloads of humans descend on the Cosumnes River Preserve. The birds loaf and feed on over a thousand acres of newly restored wetlands; the people watch the birds. But Preserve managers say even seemingly benign activities like birdwatching can cause problems. "Waterfowl in particular have very stringent energy requirements for migration and breeding. If someone walking along the marsh kicks up 5,000 ducks, there's a lot of energy expended. Eventually, especially if other stresses follow, you can lose some birds..." says the Bureau of Land Management's Holden Brink. "We're trying to establish a tradition of use here," says the Preserve's Greg Elliott. "If there's too much disturbance, the birds won't come back."
Educating visitors offers the best chance of balancing public access with habitat protection, says Elliott. Through a combination of tours, signs and exhibits, Elliott hopes to teach the Preserve's 13,000 annual visitors about how their activities affect the wildlife. "If we just put up a bunch of rules, people don't understand the reasons behind them, she says. "But when we actually talk to them, the visitors are totally receptive. We're learning that natural resource management is sometimes not so much management of the ecosystem, but management of the human impact on it," says Elliott.
Contact: Preserve Visitor Center (916)684-2816
[ ABAG HOME | SFEP HOME ]
Copyright © 2002, San Francisco Estuary Project