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100th
anniversary celebrations start Saturday
By
Roy
Gault
Statesman Journal
It's been 100 years since
snowy egret plumes were the rage for women's hats, and hunters anxious
to cash in were shooting them nearly to extinction across the
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Special
to the Statesman Journal Air-boat
rides, offered free at Tule Lake National Wildlife Refugle, are
one of the most popular events at the Tule Lake Migratory Bird
Festival, which will be Saturday.
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As a result of the
subsequent protection offered in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt,
Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge is celebrating its 100th anniversary with
a series of birdathons and free events, including the Tule Lake
Migratory Bird Festival on Saturday.
Free bus tours, air-boat
rides and nature walks — and plenty of activities for kids — will be
offered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at a refuge that sprawls
on both sides of the Oregon-California line.
"It's all about
seeing wildlife," said Dave Menke, outdoor recreation planner for
the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex "The air-boat
rides are fun and unique and are the most popular event at the festival.
But hopefully, the whole thing is getting people out to see
wildlife."
There are plenty of
egrets to see — hundreds of snowy egrets and thousands of greater
egrets — mixed in with thousands of other birds.
"You'll see avocets
and stilts and cinnamon teal, a wide variety of dabbling ducks,
Birding reports for
single days in recent weeks at the six refuges in the Klamath complex
include 22 sandhill cranes, 15 marbled godwits, 90 white-faced ibis,
dunlin numbering in the hundreds, and sightings of varying numbers of
dusky flycatchers, common yellowthroats, Caspian terns, peregrine
falcons, prairie falcons, black-throated sparrows, yellow-rumped
warblers, ferruginous hawks, common snipes, northern shrikes, greater
yellowlegs and black-necked stilts.
Lower Klamath is the
second national wildlife refuge to turn 100 years old in Oregon, the
first being Three Arch Rocks National Wildlife Refuge, the first
national refuge west of the Mississippi River, established Oct. 14,
1907.
"This refuge is
something William Finley lobbied for," Menke said. "He was
also involved in Three Arch Rocks and Malheur becoming wildlife refuges.
It was all part of the same effort. He was concerned particularly about
the plume hunting and unregulated commercial waterfowl hunting. That's
what stirred him to lobby Theodore Roosevelt."
A refuge 10 miles south
of
Menke said the egrets,
which sparked the conservation effort for the
A good way to get a good
look at the bird life would be to sign up for one of two bus trips that
will leave the visitor center at Tule Lake Refuge at 9 a.m. — one for
a loop around Lower Klamath and the other for a tour of Tule Lake
refuges.
The air-boat tours will
be at
In both cases the tours
will fill up, and calling ahead to reserve a spot is required.
"Anybody can sign up
on a first-come, first-served basis, and these trips fill rapidly,"
Menke emphasized. "We'll run three air boats, and each one will
take three or four people at a time. The tour buses have a capacity of
16, but we'll also add a van that will take an additional five or six.
Others are welcome to follow along in their own cars if they'd
like."
While visitors in their
own cars will miss out on part of the naturalist's commentary, they'll
still get to participate in a lot of the activity.
"We'll make stops
all along the way to tell people about wildlife, set up spotting scopes
where we find a good vantage point, and take a good look at sandhill
cranes or white-faces ibis or any other species," Menke said.
For those who miss out on
the big-ticket items, the bus tour or the boat tour, there will still be
plenty of opportunities to get out and see birds.
"We'll be doing
birding walks into Discovery Marsh, a developed wetland near the visitor
center," Menke said. "We'll be doing those all through the
morning. The important thing is to call and see what's available."
As for the bus or boat
tours, there's always the possibility that someone who has registered
won't show up at departure time, so Menke encourages day-of-the-event
signups to get on a waiting list.
Visitors can go out on
car routes on their own, but Menke says the guided tours are best,
especially for beginners.
"We'll get you out
to see 30, 35 or 40 different species of wildlife with an expert birder
who's going to help you understand what you're seeing, and who will
teach you things as simple as how best to use your binoculars," he
said.
"You'll learn how to
set up a spotting scope, and you'll have a chance to see birds being
banded and then sent off on their migratory route. It's a unique
experience to be out on a significant refuge like this with
knowledgeable people, and have it all available in a single day."
For those who'd rather go
it alone, Menke's advice is:
"It's rewarding to
get out there at dawn. The earlier in the morning, the better the
wildlife observation opportunities, the better the chance to experience
those areas and to see wildlife on your own."
gault@StatesmanJournal.com
or (503) 399-6723
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Source: http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080513/
OUTDOORS/805130347/1034/SPORTS