Chapter Year Report

General Meeting

Russian River Water Wrangling

October Birding

Bird Walk Reports

Observations

Backyard Birding:
Water Gardening for Birds, Part One

Pee Wee Update

Related Activites

Eagle Feathers-a Legal Flap

North Coast Birds on Tape

British Birders for Corks

Protecting Coastal Rocks, Islets

New Edition of Field Guide

Magazines Benefit Audubon

British Birders for Corks
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is urging its million members to boycott wines bottled with plastic corks, according to the Guardian Weekly newspaper.
The Society is concerned about the future of the cork oak forests of Portugal and Spain, the source of 80 percent of the world's cork and important habitat for 42 different species of birds. These include migrants and such vulnerable species as the Spanish Imperial Eagle, Black Stork, and Black Vulture.
The Royal Society fears that the shift to cork substitutes will cause farmers to cut down the oak forests and plant cash crops like sunflowers and fast-growing trees like eucalyptus, the Guardian Weekly reports.
A Sonoma County wine industry official told the Leaves that the shift away from oak cork seems inevitable because it has a history of failing and affecting the quality or taste of the wine.
(The newspaper clipping was provided to the Leaves by Claire Shurvinton, Madrone representative to the Sonoma County Conservation Council.)

Protecting coastal rocks, islets
California's thousands of off-shore rocks and islets would gain wilderness status under a law proposed by Congressman Sam Farr (D-Monterey).
The protection would cover rocks and islands within 3 miles of the coast-about 7,000 square acres of land. These rocks shelter about 200,000 nesting marine birds of at least 13 species. Two of them, the brown pelican and the least tern, are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt, who attended Farr's announcement of the California Rocks and Islands Wilderness Act, said permanent, ironclad protections are needed. Oregon's coastal rocks and islands already are protected by federal wilderness status.
(based on a story in the San Francisco Chronicle, 1 September 1999)