Charlotte Observer
1.23.07
The birds have come
Editorial
An annual miracle is under way out on the vast flat farmfields of Northeastern North Carolina. There, in an area someone once called the world's busiest airport because millions of flights take off and land daily, great big migratory waterfowl spend their winters.
They come from as far away as the Arctic Circle to while away the nighttime hours on such lively lakes as Pungo Lake and Phelps Lake. When daylight comes they fly and feed, rising in long strings of snow geese and in small families of tundra swans to search for food. They come in such numbers and swarm in such formations they sometimes seem to occupy the sky in intricate patterns of Vs and Xs and undulating lines.
The biologists tell us this season is a record, that more swans and geese are making this their winter home than ever before -- or at least since scientists have begun counting them.
Standing in the middle of the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge before dawn Friday, observers watched for the birds and listened to what sounds at first like the raucus babble of an out-of-hand cocktail party. But just then, birds already in the air changed direction and rushed back in a long, thick airborne line that must have stretched a mile or more. It no longer sounded like a party. It sounded like a football stadium from three blocks away when something big happens.
It's difficult to believe without seeing it firsthand how singularly rich is the northeast region of this state -- not in financial or other material ways, but in the astonishing diversity of its wildlife. Researchers say there are more black bears here than in the mountains, and the red wolves are showing signs of flourishing. One large adult red wolf, spooked away from its post studying a flock of swans for breakfast, bounded away and across the road a few hundred yards ahead of a truckload of journalists and conservationists. An adult bear and two cubs bounded across the stubble of a cornfield and birds flew over. You don't see that every day at Trade and Tryon.
It is in this corner of the state that the U.S. Navy wishes to build a practice jet landing field. It plans to change the crops grown to discourage the waterfowl -- 5- and 6-pound geese and 15- to 20-pound swans that can bring down a jet -- from flying near the practice landing field.
The fowl are still likely to come every year, and they're still going
to fly in search of food. And when they do, we believe, there will be collisions
of bird and plane and pilot, and nothing good can come of that. Perhaps
the Navy, in a forthcoming environmental statement, can show how it intends
to control nature and command the birds to change their ways and avoid
any harm to costly machines, highly trained pilots and lovely avian life.
Perhaps. So far, the Navy has failed to make a credible case.
