Washington State Legislative Session

Washington State Legislative Session: The session currently underway goes through March 7th. For a one-page summary of Audubon Washington’s legislative priorities go to 2024_audubon_legislative_priorities_one_pager_12.2023_2.pdf.

Click below for a link to Audubon Washington’s legislative tracker (Bill Tracker: 2024 Legislative Session | Audubon Washington). The “Take Action” link with each bill listed allows easily communicating your support to your state representatives and senator. Each bill number links to the particular bill’s page on the legislature’s website. There you can find the bill’s text, related reports, and where it stands in the legislative process. On a particular bill’s page, scroll down to “Bill History, 2024 Regular Session” to see what committee is currently considering the bill. At the upper left of the page, click on “Legislative Committees,” then on the relevant House or Senate committee to find the date when the committee will hold a hearing on the bill. From there you can go to a page where you may be able to enter your support for or opposition to the particular bill before the hearing and testify via zoom if you wish. Alternatively, on any page of the Legislature Home (wa.gov) website, scroll to the bottom of the page and at the left click on “Comment on a Bill,” “Participate in Committee Hearings,” etc. Legislators want to hear from us, and this website makes it easy.

Comment Here

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Comment Here 〰️

Barred Owl Management Strategy: As mentioned in the December and January Conservation Notes (Skagit Audubon Society - Conservation Notes), within its responsibility for implementing the Endangered Species Act the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) proposes to remove non-native, invasive Barred Owls from parts of the range of the Northern Spotted Owl. Since the highly adaptable Barred Owl arrived in the Northwest about fifty years ago, its numbers have greatly expanded, increasingly displacing the Northern Spotted Owl, which has been on the Endangered Species List since 1990.
Scientists now project that the Northern Spotted Owl will be extinct in one to several decades if Barred Owls are not removed from at least some of the Spotted Owl’s range. The six alternatives in the environmental impact statement (EIS) accompanying the proposed strategy include the “No Action” alternative required in every EIS and five “Action” alternatives, all calling for killing Barred Owls. In mid-January Skagit Audubon submitted a comment letter supporting the USFWS strategy and suggesting a number of adjustments. The chapter’s board vote on this letter was not unanimous. Several members expressed strong reservations about killing one species to benefit another. Some members voting in favor expressed strong reservations about not taking action when that decision likely would mean extinction for the Northern Spotted Owl and possibly for another subspecies, the California Spotted Owl.

To read Skagit Audubon’s letter, click here. For information on conservation issues and advocacy, see Conservation Notes under the Conservation tab.

Creating Bird-Friendly Communities

Sometime in the early afternoon of October 28th, a half mile from downtown Mount Vernon, a Wilson’s Snipe dropped into our backyard for a meal. When darkness fell she, or he, still probed the wet ground near the rain garden, finding enough earthworms and other good things to stay a while. Encountering snipe around Skagit’s wetlands and ditches isn’t unusual, but before that day we had never caught sight of this fine bird on our city lot. Birders know the thrill when rare birds appear or more familiar ones turn up in unexpected places, especially in the backyard. One of the great gifts birding gives us is the habit of attention, of being open and alert to the other than human world all around us. Paying attention sets us up to be thrilled again and again. And birds, given our attention, remind us that the Earth is not ours alone.

Photo by Brenda Cunningham

Wilson’s Snipe Photo by Brenda Cunningham

It’s no wonder that birding has moved so many towards conservation action. Habitat loss and climate change are arguably the greatest threats to the well-being of birds and all wildlife. Addressing those huge problems benefits people too. Reluctant as many may be to accept the indisputable fact, we are not separate from the rest of the living world. When birds and other wildlife are in trouble we are too.

Among Audubon Washington’s strategic initiatives is one titled, “Creating Bird-Friendly Communities” (Bird-Friendly Communities | Audubon Washington). This focus urges us to manage the places where we live, whether in town or the countryside, as habitat for birds as well as for ourselves. Recall John Marzluff’s Skagit Audubon presentation a few years ago about his recently published Welcome to Subirdia: Sharing Our Neighborhoods with Wrens, Robins, Woodpeckers, and Other Wildlife. Make your home friendly to birds and wonders can happen. 

A recent conversation with Natalie Niblack about her terrific bird portraits on display at the Museum of Northwest Art brought to mind Henry Beston’s words about wild creatures in The Outermost House:  

“In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

When environmental, political, personal problems loom, noticing birds takes us out of ourselves, reawakens us to the wonder of the world and reinvigorates our will to do whatever we’re able to turn appreciation into action. Watch for snipe in your yard, read about the wonder of them (Wilson's Snipe Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology), and be active in supporting the places birds and humans need for healthy and fulfilling lives.

For information on conservation issues and advocacy, see Conservation Notes on the Skagit Audubon website, www.skagitaudubon.org, under the Conservation tab.