Weld County Birding and Pawnee District Ranger Visit

[The "Nunn Guy"]

Hi all

Birded all around Weld yesterday ... saw 79 species with the following new spring birds:

• Lark Bunting [Weld CR 96]
• Ruddy Duck [Loloff Reservoir]
• Swainson's Hawk [Beebe Draw]
• Semipalmated Sandpiper [Weld CR 59] --Both Loloff, Weld CR 59 probably had total of 20+ peeps collectively
  
• Least Sandpiper [Weld CR 59]
• Loloff had peeps as well heatwaves
• Wilson's Phalarope [Loloff Reservoir and Weld CR 59]
• Burrowing Owl-2 [Weld CR 59 south of marsh on west to south of flooded field corner alongside road]
• Barn Swallow
• Savannah Sparrow-2 [Weld CR 59]
• Vesper Sparrows
• Chipping Sparrow - few
• Brown-headed Cowbird

Here's the gist on my Pawnee District Ranger visit:

• First, he was nice guy to talk with and open to hearing concerns and solutions but he is based in reality in terms of his annual program of work, limited budget and lack of human resources to perform the work
  
• Office currently has only ~50% of staff (looks like 10 positions in total)--two Archeologists, a temporary biologist, and a Recreation Specialist (retires next month).  Reality here is USDA is "guinea pig" for Administrative streamlining efforts.  Hiring to fill needed vacancies has greatly reduced in terms of process and approvals
  
• Budget is extremely tight and diminishes each fiscal year--stabilization not expected in next few Fiscal years
• Multiple use of the resource is a balance--I heard "squeaky wheel" usually gets attention
  
• Recreational shooting is exploding (no pun intended) in growth--they hear from rec shooters way-y-y-y more than birders
• Constituency (Rec shooting) pressure from State, County and Recreational Shooting groups for access to these public lands
• Talked of removing Pawnee Bird Tour signs due to $$$ cost of maintaining (replacing) due to vandalism and theft of displays
• Talked of getting with birders on changing and designing a 21st century birding tour, identifying birding locales around the Pawnee and using RF, GPS, mobile tech as a "virtual birding tour"--already being studied.  In both east and west sections (north to south, too).
  
• Most shooting occurs in the SE section (lower half) of the PNG west section (ie, Weld CR 96)--he mentions
• District Ranger came from an oil and gas background in Oklahoma
• The recent oil and gas development decision (2012ish) prevents drilling surface of PNG for new permits after 2014
• A drill will be drilled on south side of Murphy's Pasture soon--legacy permit (older than 2014).  There are two more legacy permits planned on PNG I heard mentioned
• In the PNG vicinity--third of all rights in private hands (surface and mineral holder same), third in mixed hands (surface owner different than mineral holder), third Federal govt hands
  
• Grassland habitat and grassland birds are of great conservation concern not sure I heard that expressed during our conversation
  

Thanks Gary Lefko, Nunn

http://coloradobirder.club/

[The "Nunn Guy"]

Hi all

I just wanted to share this "dream project" I am working on in the background.  I've been taking environmental, conservation and now non-profit administration courses via Oregon State and Colorado State for reasons of being able to work on "green" side of Forest Service and/or my retirement project of starting a "Friends of Pawnee National Grasslands" non-profit organization.

In the background already is (1) enrolled in CSU's Non-profit Administration graduate-level certificate; (2) access to National Wildlife Refuge's Friends system and their guides and experience of how to build a Friends organization (30 years of knowledge); (3) a birder friend from Boulder Audubon drafting letter to local Audubon's (and others) Conservation Chairs; (4) I'm investigating legal requirements to register the Friends org for Pawnee and (5) investigating Forest Service contracts and agreements regulations when it comes to being able to direct non-profit monies (fundraising) to local District.

That being said a Friends group is a partnership relationship with the Federal entity (not an adversarial relationship) to help with issues, concerns, projects, etc. The hope as well is partnering with all the wonderful conservation organizations in Colorado and beyond to make this that much more successful. I see the next initial step as:  Setting up meeting with a core team (2 to 5 people) somewhere in the middle of Fort Collins and Denver to walk through this effort in more detail to seek out if this is a viable effort or not and to begin to really go after this project.  There are two passionate people already (myself and person mentioned above).  I also mentioned this "dream" of mine at Denver Audubon CBC to Polly (I believe) who was very interested in something like this--so hope you are reading this ... :-) . 

I would think core group would do the following:  discuss viability, meet as a team with District Ranger (he seemed open to the concept), start to think about a board, initiate the legal structure of the org, define mission and vision of this Friends group, and starting building the Friends group.

This is exciting for me ... if you could not tell by my writings.  Feel free to reach out to via email (by Reply Privately to Author option here)

Thanks Gary Lefko, Nunn
http://coloradobirder.club/

[Douglas Kibbe]

Gary:

Thanks for your summary of the Pawnee District Ranger talk.  It was enlightening and a bit frightening.

Good Birding

Doug

On Monday, April 23, 2018 at 10:13:15 AM UTC-6, The "Nunn Guy" wrote: