[CPEO-MEF] Wildlife on military bases

[lsiegel@cpeo.org]

{Some people had trouble receiving this posting earlier today, so I'm
re-sending it in our normal format. - LS]


Bases Loaded

Laura Tangley
National Wildlife Magazine
October-November, 2005

As sprawl eats up habitat from coast to coast, some of the nation's
military installations have become sanctuaries for a surprising number
of birds and other wildlife. 

WITH THE SUN sinking fast over the salt marsh, Chris Eberly had barely
half an hour to complete his mission. Armed with high-powered binoculars
and a spotting scope, he hurried down a trail that headed toward the
Tijuana River just south of San Diego. Eberly, an East Coast-based
ornithologist and avid birder, was hoping to spot?or at least hear?the
endangered light-footed clapper rail, a secretive wading bird found only
in Southern California's increasingly scarce saltwater estuaries,
including this one in Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge.

Hearing a sound - a clattering kek, kek, kek, kek, kek - Eberly froze.
"That's it!" he shouted, pointing to a dense clump of spiky cordgrass.

More striking than the rail's call, however, was another, even louder
sound, which neither the bird nor the birder seemed to notice - the
steady hum of a half dozen Navy Seahawk helicopters circling overhead.
Their pilots were practicing tricky takeoffs and landings at the Navy's
nearby Outlying Landing Field, one of seven facilities that make up a
sprawling, 41,858-acre military complex known as Naval Base Coronado.

...

Full article can be viewed at:
http://www.nwf.org/nationalwildlife/article.cfm?issueID=77&articleID=1118

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org
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