After receiving Jenny’s email on January 20th, seeing the post on our Facebook page or by other means, eight MBC members attended the quarterly board meeting of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (DGIF) in Richmond on January 23, 2020 traveling to Henrico County by carpool. New member Cathy Martens, MBC president Guy Babineau and Laura Neale spoke during the public comment period about the destruction of habitat for Virginia’s largest waterbird colony on South Island as a result of the VDOT construction to build a Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT) Expansion. Several members of Richmond Audubon and Mike Parr of the American Bird Conservancy made excellent arguments in favor of protecting bird habitat and for both short term and long term solutions. The birding community is proposing solutions that will eventually allow for both the expansion project and the preservation of the nesting habitat. Citizens concerned about the 30-year-old waterbird colony traveled from as far as Rockingham and Arlington to attend the meeting. Beyond the conservation argument, the economic benefit of birding in Virginia with local, regional, national and international birders spending their birding dollars in Virginia was mentioned multiple times. Several speakers acknowledged that DGIF has been working with VDOT to find a solution, though most stated that the present course is not sufficient to protect the 2020 nesting season and that VDOT plans to haze returning birds is illegal. We hope to attend an upcoming VDOT meeting in February. Late in the hour long comment session, a senior citizen spoke briefly and from the heart which deeply touched many of us, she basically said; do this because its the right thing to do.
