Birders Uniting

Sun., June 8, 1997

San Francisco Examiner

Wildlife conservation

Armed with a new field guide and an admiration for the long-billed curlew, the president of the San Francisco-based American Bird Conservancy wants to convert 63 million U.S. bird-watchers into conservationists.

George H. Fenwick, leader of the new organization that just published “All the Birds of North America,” says an army of bird-lovers could warn wildlife officials of harmful sprayings in fields, parks and public grounds.

He is using the debut of the 172-page, vinyl-coated field guide of original drawings and paintings, published by Harper Collins, to spread a message of environmental activism.

Fenwick, formerly vice president of the Nature Conservancy, cites data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and other surveys that estimate that 63 million people watch or feed birds from their homes.

But he warned that “animals are dying all the time, all over the place, from pesticide poisoning. We can’t put numbers to it, because mortality is completely under-reported.”

The American Bird Conservancy - formed in 1994 from a merger of sections of the International Council for Bird Preservation - played an active role in banning a pesticide that poisoned an estimated 20,000 Swainson’s hawks in Argentina’s La Pampa province in 1995.

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