Unfortunately, There Will Be No Great Blue Heron Rookery On The Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

When I started this blog a few years ago, my main focus was nothing short of trying to help enlighten the bird-watching community nationwide about one of the most spectacular wild bird refuges our country has to offer, the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.

Countless hours, as well as countless miles, have been logged on the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge auto tour route by myself, all on my own time and on my own dime, by the way, to help capture images that would portray this special place in a way that would help bring this refuge to the birding community and, in turn, the birding community to the refuge, in hopes of gaining much-needed public support for the refuge.

The Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge has been a special place for me for many years now, and I have tried my best to portray that with this blog and my photography.

But I will be honest here, my fondness for the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge is, well, starting to fade as of late, so much so I have even considered not blogging about the refuge anymore due to extreme frustration.

Part of that stems from their quick decision to not even entertain the idea of erecting a great blue heron rookery on the refuge.

Not all of this waning interest, however, is derived from that one decision so let me explain.

I am a huge believer in getting people out in nature to help light a spark within and, in turn, hopefully, gather more public support for these natural places.

We live in a day where competing interests for natural resources, namely for land, water, minerals, oil, and trees are starting to threaten these very places we hold dear.

And, in fact, the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge is right in the thick of it in its own right with an ever-increasing demand for competing water uses that continue to shrink the Bear River itself each year, leaving the refuge drier and drier every summer.

If you have been out bird watching on the refuge the past few years, you certainly have witnessed this in person.

To combat this, the only real weapon nature has is good old-fashioned public support, plain and simple.

But public support is hard to achieve on its own without a lot of effort when there are so many competing entities in our modern-day world that take our attention away from places such as the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.

Let’s face it, just turn on the tv, check your email, or pick up your smartphone and we all are inundated with so much of this competing world I speak of through social media, the news, and instant messaging, what little about nature is out there gets buried almost immediately.

This means wildlife agencies, on both the state and federal level, need to actively promote and fight for any and all public support they can by constantly trying to get people out in nature to show the public just how incredible it really is.

But, unfortunately, this is where the fight for nature is lacking and in a big way.

My previous blog post about suggesting a great blue heron rookery on the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge was an effort to help give the refuge one more reason, a very unique one at that, for people to come to visit and to get interested in birds and bird watching, the very first step in gaining support for these wild places.

The great blue heron rookery at Farmington Bay is an incredible place to watch nature unfold during the breeding season and a place where people can come and light that spark within about birding.

It was my hope to add this very same offering on the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge auto tour route to help encourage more and more people to come and learn about great blue herons and the refuge itself in a way that is a rarity in wildlife sanctuaries these days, watching the miracle of life happen before our very eyes.

But it was to no avail as the other day I got a voicemail from refuge management and their decision to not pursue the great blue heron rookery despite an earlier email by their biologist stating “that is a great idea” and that she intended to contact Farmington Bay for more info.

Simply put, the fight for nature isn’t just a biological struggle, not in the least.

It’s more of a social and economic battle for nature’s resources that birds and other creatures depend on if we are to have them for future generations to enjoy.

It is also a never-ending political fight for funding to just purchase, protect, and operate such places as the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.

And these battles are being lost because wildlife agencies aren’t fighting where the battle truly lays, namely the arena of public interest and support.

Habitat management is important in the long run, no question about it, but it will be quite meaningless if and when land managers and politicians make decisions that adversely affect these wild places in a negative way because the public isn’t there to speak up and fight for them, and that is starting to happen more and more if you watch the news.

One such decision that came to light during the past few years was giving “big oil” companies the green light to drill in Alaska on a “protected” national wildlife refuge.

I don’t know about anybody else, but for me, that literally made me sick to my stomach when I heard about this being implemented on such a cherished and valuable place for wildlife.

And just today, in fact, I read how one member of congress is continuing the fight to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge so the fight is far from over and won’t be until the public votes out this kind of thinking in congress in November.

It just goes to show that nothing is truly “protected” if we, the public, let our guard down and let our interest in nature wane just a bit.

And similar decisions that hit close very close to home regarding the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge are definitely on their way as the State of Utah continues to work towards more dams and new ways to take more and more water out of the already over-burdened Bear River.

The only way to fight this is to get people out in nature so they can see firsthand how incredible places like the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge really and encourage them to help vote in a more nature-friendly government as well as stand up now and voice their opinions to the current politicians and land-use managers that are making these one-sided decisions.

Over the years, I have suggested other things in addition to the rookery to be implemented on the refuge to help increase visitation and, in turn, support for the refuge, including resuming their summer birding tours, burrowing owl nests, osprey nests, and planting sunflowers and rocky mountain bee plant (which is native to the area and on the refuge by the way), just to name a few, all of which were shot down almost immediately.

And this is why I am losing interest in the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge now, I’m running out of gas in trying to help fight for the refuge when there seems to be little to no real interest in truly trying to increase visitation and, in turn, support for the refuge by the refuge itself.

People won’t support something they have no interest in and they won’t have an interest if they never visit or experience it, plain and simple.

Now before I am labeled a boat rocker or just someone with a bone to pick, let me clarify something here, there is no place in Utah I would fight for more than the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and it has been “my cause” for decades now.

As such, I have given years of free photo classes on their annual swan day to help encourage more people to come and get interested in nature photography as well as the refuge itself as a birding destination.

I spend an immeasurable amount of my own time on the auto tour route talking to and helping educate visitors about the refuge to anybody and everybody that I met along the way during the many years I have been out there.

This blog, started and funded all on my own, was implemented to help get the word out about the refuge on the internet and takes an incredible amount of my time from not only writing but photographing and editing as well.

So over the years, I have put a lot of time and effort into the refuge in hopes of gaining more visitation and public support.

I know it has been effective to some degree actually as I hear from a few of my readers and how they visited the refuge solely because of this blog.

And to take this notion about public support a step further, I actually have a college degree that was largely focused on natural resource economics with studies at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

My senior thesis was actually written pertaining to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge with regards to a plan many years ago to try and expand the refuge.

I truly understand how the economy and social aspects affect the natural world, it’s what actually propelled me to get my degree in the first place if truth be told.

And I also see how little understanding there is by wildlife agencies when it comes to the economic and social sides of nature.

But if we don’t start fighting for more public support by getting more and more people interested in places like the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, we will lose them someday when other competing interests take away the natural resources that make these places special.

The great blue heron rookery was a way to help pull more public support for the refuge by giving the public something unique to truly come and enjoy.

The status quo is no longer going to suffice with regards to nature preservation when there are so many competing entities taking people away from nature.

In a nutshell, the refuge needs to, for a lack of a better term, “sell” nature to the public by offering more things, new things not currently available to get people interested in and willing to support the natural world around us.

This means thinking outside the box and starting to add new things to the refuge like a rookery, for example, to give people more of a reason to come to the refuge and see firsthand what it is all about.

But if you are disappointed like I am in the refuge’s decision to pull the plug on the great blue heron rookery idea, contact the refuge office and let them know.

Voicing our opinions, no matter what they are, is how we protect our public lands.

We, the public, should have more of a say on how our public lands are managed and the only way that can and will happen is if the public gets out and starts to appreciate them more and speaks up about them, over and over if necessary.

One last thing, this blog post is in no way meant as a dig towards the refuge management or staff but rather just a voice of opinion on what would help garner more support and publicity for the refuge itself.

My true interests lay with the birds and other creatures on the refuge and sometimes we need to speak up, even if it might curl a few feathers, and offer a different way of doing things that might be better than the way things have been done in the past just because that is how they have always been done.

Our world is, whether we like it or not, now one where political pressure and economic demands for scarce natural resources are increasing daily and competing for the same natural places we hold dear.

We stand to lose some of our wild places, including the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, if we aren’t careful and are slow to try and grab as much public support along the way through education and information by offering new ways to attract the public to come and see for themselves why these places are so spectacular and worth fighting for.

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