Vanguard of
the Volunteers
Salt of the Earth
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Like many Americans, Phil Pryde has a problem with high sodium. But unlike
most people, modifying his diet and getting more exercise won't be much
help. Pryde's concern is with southern California's increasingly saline
Salton Sea. The sea receives a lot of agricultural runoff, and it has
no natural outlet, so it loses water only through evaporation. Consequently,
it becomes more saline each year. Today the Salton Sea is 25 percent saltier
than the Pacific Ocean, endangering the fish, plants, and more than 400
species of birds that depend on the sea--at a time when about 90 percent
of southern California's natural wetlands have been lost to development.
"Human activities created the Salton Sea as it currently exists,
but human activities have destroyed natural habitats for migratory birds,"
says Pryde, who is an emeritus professor of geography at San Diego State
University and chair of Audubon California's Salton Sea Task Force. "The
sea is more crucial for these birds now than ever before--and more troubled."
Located approximately 130 miles east of San Diego, the Salton Sea was
created in 1905 when the Colorado River broke through irrigation levees
and filled the Salton Sink Desert. Over the years the sea's water level
has been maintained by the runoff from local farms, and the vast body
of water has become "far and away the most important stopping ground
for migratory and wintering birds on the Pacific Flyway," says Pryde,
who has been a member of Audubon since 1969.
For the past four years he and his task-force colleagues have worked
with state and federal government agencies to find solutions to the sea's
problems. While there haven't been any easy answers, "Audubon is
now the unquestioned conservation leader on the Salton Sea," says
Dan Taylor, the executive director of Audubon California, "thanks
to the hard work of Pryde and his committee."
Pryde's involvement with the Salton Sea Task Force isn't the first time
he has been at the forefront of an Audubon campaign--or the first time
he's been a passionate advocate for local waterways. In the mid-1980s
he was instrumental in halting a federal plan to dam the Santa Margarita
River. Pryde's careful analysis discrediting government claims about the
economic benefits of the proposed $233 million dams, delivered at a congressional
hearing, seriously weakened support for the project.
To Pryde, the bottom line is simple. "Life, whether a heron's or a human's, depends on viable water supplies," he says. "[The anthropologist and writer] Loren Eiseley was right: The magic, and indeed the entire basis, of our planet is to be found in water. "
--Lauren Morello
Q&A
Arizona Advocate
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Sam Kathryn
Campana brings a golden resume to her appointment as vice-president
and founding director of Audubon Arizona's new state office. Previously,
during her tenure as the mayor of Scottsdale (1994-96), Campana co-created
the Arizona Preserve Initiative, which saved 19,000 acres of Sonoran
Desert. In 1994, while she was a member of the city council, she was
instrumental in Scottsdale's being named the Most Livable City in America
by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. And for 16 years Campana led Arizonans
for Cultural Development, the state's arts advocacy organization. We
talked recently with this accomplished community leader, the most recent
addition to the Audubon team.
question: How did you get into politics?
answer: Please--I like to call it
public service! I have always been interested in the outdoors and the
arts. I've hiked the Grand Canyon 50 times. I saw a chance to do something
for Scottsdale, and I served on the city council for eight years before
becoming mayor. I'm proud we saw to it that one-third of Scottsdale will
never be built on.
Q: What's this about a fellowship?
A: After leaving as mayor, I received
a one-year fellowship from the International Women Forum Leadership Foundation.
It allowed me to study leadership styles in Southeast Asia, England, and
other places around the world. I talked to corporate women, elected officials,
school-board presidents-women in all walks of life. I also had time to
think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I'd had three
big careers--public policy, arts advocacy, and raising three wonderful
children. I asked myself, what do I really care about now?
Q: How did you come to Audubon?
A: Through friends of mine at the
Nature Conservancy. Then I got a call from Les Corey, who is vice-president
of state programs for Audubon, which had been looking for a state director
for some time. I like to think they were just waiting for me! They were
choosy, and so was I.
Q: What are your priorities?
A: Arizona is one of the most highly
urbanized states in the union. Almost everybody lives in cities. That
gives us a chance to concentrate on nature centers and give children an
outdoor experience.
Q: How do you see your role in this?
A: My background is in public policy,
and so I see science now as my biggest growth area. I have a lot of reading
to do. I'll never be a scientist, but it's crucial that when we talk about
public policy our ideas must be rooted in good science.
Q: Everybody calls you Sam. Is that
short for Samantha?
A: No. Growing up in Idaho, I caught
snakes and frogs and was kind of a tomboy. My maiden name was Houston,
so the other kids called me Sam. It stuck.
--Frank Graham Jr.
FOR INFORMATION on the Randall Davey Audubon Center, call 505-983-4609 or visit www.audubon.org/chapter/nm/NM/rdac.
© 2002 NASI
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STATE
OF THE STATES On May 18, to celebrate International Migratory Bird Day, George Wuerch, the mayor of Anchorage, Alaska, will sign an Urban Treaty for Bird Conservation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The event will officially launch a partnership that will end up providing tens of thousands of additional dollars for migratory-bird education and habitat conservation and restoration. Audubon Alaska is playing a central role in the partnership by working with the city, the FWS, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, among others, to develop an educational booklet and an interpretive map of prime birding areas in the city. For the Anchorage Audubon chapter, the treaty is an opportunity to put long-term data on loons to good use. Anchorage is the only urban place in North America where common and Pacific loons nest, although many pairs are disturbed by human activity--rousted by curious picnickers, say, or entangled in fishing lines--in the 10 city lakes where they breed and feed. "If we teach people how not to disturb loons, we'll be able to sustain loon nesting in the Anchorage lakes," says George Matz, chapter president. Meanwhile, chapter members are using maps prepared by the Alaska Conservation Alliance to identify undeveloped property around the lakes for purchase and preservation. |
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Chapter The hundreds of large turbines along windy Van Sycle Ridge that provide clean energy for as many as 60,000 northwestern homes now do so without significantly threatening Canada geese, larks, and other migrating birds, thanks to the Audubon Blue Mountain chapter. The chapter, which straddles the border between central Oregon and Washington, provided input for the environmental-impact study for the Stateline wind-power plant, which is owned by FPL Energy. Today the chapter has representatives on the facility's technical advisory board as well. Blue Mountain Audubon convinced the utility to do extensive spring and fall night-migration studies and to relocate the turbines away from heavily traveled flight corridors. Their joint effort has paid off in very low bird mortality rates at the facility since it began operation last July.
Public
Policy A stealth
Senate Farm Bill add-on, successfully opposed by Audubon this spring,
would have put the lives of red-winged blackbirds, cormor-ants,
geese, and songbirds into the hands of an agency that views them
primarily as pests. Sponsored by Arkansas's U.S. senators, Democrat
Blanche Lincoln and Republican Tim Hutchinson, the amendment would
have given the U.S. Department of Agriculture the authority to exterminate
migratory birds at will by exempting its Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service from the provisions of both the Migratory Bird
Treaty Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Support for
the proposal withered after Audubon's criticism made headlines and
revealed the legislation's wide-ranging impact. As a result, the
senators decided not to forward the amendment to the floor of the
Senate. --Kristen
Fountain |