"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
John Lennon
So, I wrote a Nerditorial on Feb 6th about Ken Oplinger's segment on his Whatcom Report program (which airs on KGMI every Sunday from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m.) regarding the Caspian Terns. Link here.
Mr. Oplinger has participated in the comment thread of that post.
First, an anonymous blogger comments...
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Ken? Show me this shadowy gang of squatter-bird-lovers!
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And then Mr Oplinger comments...
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Anon: Its absolutely not a shadowy gang of squatter bird lovers, it's a not so shadowy gang of BANANA's (Build Absolutely Nothing Absolutely Nowhere At all) who are using this issue as their next reason to kill off the redevelopment of the GP site.
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Further down the thread, Mr Oplinger comments directly to me...
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Two thoughts on your editorial:
1) I don't recall ever saying: "the only way to achieve an economic benefit from the G-P site is to build stuff on every square foot of the entire place." I'm very supportive of the current plans, which call for a substantial amount of park land. I'd refer you and your readers to those plans here: http://www.portofbellingham.com/DocumentView.aspx?DID=215
2) Please expand on your comment that, "(t)here really is no other place for them [the squatter birds] to go". Did they spontaneously appear here last year out of thin air? Did their previous habitat get paved over for a parking lot in 2009, prompting their move to Bellingham? Would be useful information to have.
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Two excellent points.
As to the first point. A Nerditorial is an Apexnerd Editorial, so the words I write in those posts are my words and my opinions, and are not presented as anything else. If I'm actually quoting someone, I put those words into a "blockquote" to set them apart from my own words.
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Like this.
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So you are correct in that you did not say "the only way to achieve an economic benefit from the G-P site is to build stuff on every square foot of the entire place."
I said that. And if I'm wrong about that then I point out here that me being wrong about something is an event that only happens on days of the week that end in a Y.
I'm sure there is park land incorporated into the plans for the redevelopment of the waterfront. However, I am clearly taking issue with the notion that the Port and the City and the Chamber of Commerce are so fixated on traditional, 20th Century development methods, that they are unable to see economic opportunity when it literally lands in their laps.
The presence of the Caspian Terns is an unexpected economic benefit that has presented itself while other plans were being made. Since there is clearly no economic benefit that can be reaped with that land in 2011, the decision to pre-emptively dissuade the Caspian Terns from returning to Bellingham is basically equivalent to throwing away free money, including sales tax money being paid by tourists instead of locals.
The Port and the City could spend the money it would otherwise spend to discourage the birds from returning and instead promoting the likely return of the Caspian Terns this year and see if it generates any boost in local tourism in 2011. It's my understanding that the area the terns were nesting upon is far from "shovel ready" so I don't see the hurry in making the land any more unfit for man or beast in 2011 just to make a political point.
As to the second point. Again, this is my opinion, and I'm not an expert on bird behavior. However it is my understanding that if the thousands of Caspian Terns can't use the nesting ground this year that they used last year (in Bellingham), then there is no other single place they can go instead.
If there was another place the Caspian Terns could have nested as a single colony, away from human development, they would have found it and used it. That is the reason that Bellingham had the second largest Caspian Tern colony on the entire West Coast.
So, what the terns will likely do is break up into smaller colonies on less desirable nesting ground elsewhere in the northwest region.
To the best of my knowledge, the reason that birds like these terns form the largest nesting colonies they can form is because there is safety in numbers. Multiple smaller colonies tend to suffer a higher percentage of loss of flock numbers, particularly hatchlings, from predators than if those same birds were able to nest in one much larger single colony.
Bottom Line: Dissuading these birds from returning to Bellingham this year will have the net effect of the local business community cutting off its own economic nose to spite someone else's environmental face.
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