Terence Wahl Is “For the Birds”

Christian Martin is a freelance writer, English instructor at Whatcom Community College and the former features editor of the Bellingham Weekly. He ruminates on life in the Pacific Northwest at his blog, ishriver.blogspot.com and can be reached at roadsidecafe@hotmail.com.

Terence Wahl has seen a lot of change in Whatcom over his 60-plus years of residence here. He remembers railroads that, before they were turned into trails crisscrossing the city, moved coal, timber and gravel from the resource-rich uplands to the bay. As a young child, he remembers touring the famous “Ironsides” battleship when the port still attracted an ongoing parade of seagoing vessels, remembers playing on an empty beach at Birch Bay before it was ringed with vacation homes and resorts, remembers the sharp, sulphuric stench from the Georgia-Pacific mill that once was a part of downtown Bellingham’s character. Wahl even recalls way back when The Bellingham Herald was an independent paper worthy of the pulp it was printed on.

Wahl has made a life out of witnessing, and writing down in turn, the changes he observes in the world around him. As a scientist and local birding expert, Wahl has authored several guides to birding in Washington and published papers tracking the changes in local bird populations. For over 30 years, he ran bird-watching tours on the Pacific out of Westport, systematically recording what he observed in what is perhaps the longest running data set for birds in the world.

But Wahl’s greatest professional achievement thus far is “Birds of Washington: Status and Distribution,” his magnum opus published last year by, ironically, the Oregon State University Press. Co-edited with Bill Tweit and Stephen G. Mlodinow, this weighty doorstop of a book represents the most comprehensive and contemporary effort to synthesize historical and current scientific studies, surveys and field reports to report on the population status and distribution of every bird species known to the Evergreen State.

While it is decidedly not a field guide for identifying birds ala “Sibley’s,” Wahl’s 436-page tome does detail each bird’s habitat, species diversity, seasonal distribution and fluctuating population numbers. It comments on environmental changes, conservation efforts and noteworthy records from both sides of the state. Ultimately, “Birds of Washington: Status and Distribution” establishes a baseline of what is known (through the year 2000) about Washington’s birds, both resident and migratory, that will prove to be invaluable to future scientific inquiries.

“The whole thing is a ballpark job,” Wahl said with characteristic modesty. “Nobody has the whole picture, but the book is accepted as a benchmark for this point in time.” He later pleaded that “this is hardly science—this is just going out and counting things!”

Not since Stanley Jewitt’s “Birds of Washington State” was published back in 1953 has anybody attempted to assemble and synthesize so much information on local bird life. And while Wahl recognizes Jewitt’s landmark publication as “a very good job,” the scientist’s resources were limited, with only a handful of people in the state actively birding. Fifty years later, thousands of Washingtonians are scanning the skies and seas for bird life, sharing their observations and questions on internet forums like Tweeters, communicating sightings almost instantaneously via cell phones and e-mail. Several important state and federal studies have increased the wealth of regional bird data, as have citizen efforts like breeding bird surveys and the Audubon Society’s annual Christmas bird count.

Another important development since the 1950s is the drastic changes to Washington’s natural environment as the statewide population has ballooned and development, in turn, boomed. The historical availability of bird habitat has been greatly compromised, as have the fecundity of feeding options. Invasive species such as house sparrows, rock doves, Canada geese and starlings, for example, have taken advantage of “our Europeanization of North America,” as Wahl put it, and exploded in numbers across the state.

New bird species recorded here are not surprising, Wahl explained, because “more eyes catch more species.” What is notable is when certain bird species are missing from surveys. For example, certain marine birds once common to Washington’s waters have had steep drops in overall numbers. Surf scoters are in sharp decline, plummeting at least 57 percent according to Wahl’s book, likely due to a corresponding decrease in herring-spawning events, like the population crash off of Cherry Point. Western grebes also appear to be diminished for reasons that remain unclear, while the reasons depressing the numbers of marbled murrelet are better understood: logging of its old-growth nesting habitat, oil spills and fish-net entanglements.

Wahl also pointed out that snow buntings, evening grosbeaks, Lapland longspurs and Bohemian waxwings—all migratory visitors who spend summers nesting on the tundra in the Far North—have all but disappeared locally over the past few years. “These flocks are now gone,” Wahl said. “There is too much pressure on these creatures.”

Historically, Wahl explains, negative impacts on local birds and other wildlife came from the landscape disruptions that farming and logging created. But today, he sees one of the primary threats as coming from the explosive popularity of recreation in our region. A growing number of outdoor enthusiasts, armed with an arsenal of high-tech gear, increasingly push into habitat that was once inaccessible, causing significant disturbances to creatures already being hammered by decreasing resources for food and shelter.

The irony is not lost on Wahl—the same sea and river kayakers, mountain bikers, rock climbers, even dog walkers who seek to get closer to and appreciate nature are also bringing significant amounts of stress to bear upon nature’s wild inhabitants.

For Wahl, the issue is not abstract. He elucidated on the effects a kayaker has when getting too close to a flock of seabirds, forcing them to take off and fly, in terms of “scoter miles” and the number of mussels required to exert such energy.

Pacific Northwesterners, it seems, are loving nature to death. “Even bird watching itself has had impacts,” he admits with a sigh.

Back on the topic of The Bellingham Herald, a subject that seemed to represent many of Bellingham’s current ills for Wahl, he marveled at the audacity the daily paper boasts by publishing an outdoors columnist whose gimmick is to bring his hound along with him into remote backcountry destinations.

Wahl groused about a Herald sports article that celebrated hordes of mountain bikes tearing through the woods around Lake Padden, recalling the days when the lake was fenced off and protected as the city’s water supply. “Do you think the wildlife wasn’t altered by the (Padden Mountain Pedal) race?” he asked. Wahl was similarly disappointed with a Herald caption for a photo showing people playing in Little Squalicum Creek, a toxic EPA Superfund site, that read “Little Squalicum Creek mud made for squishing between toes.”

“What kind of example (are these stories) setting?” he asked aloud, believing that the daily paper’s approach to coverage of the environmental realities of Whatcom County is, at best, problematic.

The key to balancing recreation’s impacts on our wildlands, according to Wahl, is that so-called “eco-tourism” activities must have an education component to them, and they must incorporate counting and scientific purposes into their outings, “otherwise they can’t justify these activities.” Other than that, hikers, dog-walkers, boaters, bikers and birders alike all need to strive to have as little impact as possible when sojourning out into nature.

“I am not optimistic,” Wahl said. “Birds are indicator species, reflecting back to us what is going on out there. And I’m afraid our eye-opening awareness will come when it is too late to save what is left.” §

This article was first published in The Bellingham Weekly.