Photo: Blackburnian Warbler, Kat Bradley-Bennett/Audubon Photography Awards
A new feature, alternating with the President’s Corner, to introduce some of our board members, coordinators, and friends
Tom Blackburn
I am not a great birder. I will always have trouble with sparrows and with warblers out of season, and learning their calls is difficult for me. But I am enthusiastic about birding because looking for birds causes me to be much more alert to everything around me in nature. Birding is like finding buried treasure – except that the treasure keeps moving, and you have to focus on everything you see and hear.
I joined the Board of ASNV only in part because of my interest in birds. Like its parent, National Audubon Society, ASNV focuses on conservation. Birds are like the canary in the coal mine. If birds are disappearing, it’s because nature is out of balance. We need to restore and preserve our natural environment, and the birds will tell us whether we’re succeeding.
I am currently the Chair of ASNV’s Advocacy Committee. Our committee works primarily on the local and state level to advocate for environmentally-sound policies. Recently we mobilized volunteers to ask state legislators to support two bills encouraging the use of native plants. The bills passed, were approved by the Governor, and take effect July 1.
We successfully opposed proposed intensive development adjacent to Fairfax County’s Huntley Meadows Park that would have increased flooding and runoff, harming the park. We’re also working to stop a proposed bike path through environmentally-significant wetlands near the Franconia-Springfield Metro station. We submitted comments opposing Governor Youngkin’s proposal to withdraw Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas initiative, a 12-state “cap and invest” program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We’ve submitted comments to Arlington County urging them to take steps to manage the growing deer population in the county which is devastating the understory plants in the county’s parks, and we’ll submit comments when the county’s detailed report on deer is published in a couple of months. We’ve also worked on other issues that are too numerous to mention here.
As a representative of ASNV, I spent 18 months on a state-mandated workgroup that was directed to develop legislation to reduce the number of free-roaming cats in Virginia and mitigate their impact on wildlife, natural resources, and public health. The workgroup included representatives of animal shelters, animal control organizations, animal welfare organizations, environmental and wildlife organizations, and state and university employees. Fourteen of the 18 members of the workgroup participated in writing a report on the problem that they released to the General Assembly in January. We plan to work with legislators and their staff to develop legislation to be introduced in the next session of the legislature.
There’s lots of work to be done to fulfill ASNV’s mission of conserving and restoring nature for the benefit of birds, other wildlife, and people in Northern Virginia. If you’d like to help us work on environmental issues from time to time, send me a message through our website at https://www.audubonva.org/tom-blackburn.