by Glynn Wilson

CLAY, Ala. - It had been 15 years since I last ran into Bob Sargent, a retired electrician and amateur bird scientists from Clay, Alabama. It was nice to see he still practices his passion for birds and their habitat and is still working hard to educate the young about the importance of conserving the environment.

Martha and Bob Sargent of Clay, Alabama and The Hummer Study Group

He and his wife Martha were instrumental in helping to launch the Clay Elementary Bird Fest last year, along with Shirley Farrell's fourth-grade enrichment class. The second annual festival took place Saturday. Here's the link to the little story about it in the Birmingham News.

Clay Students Meet Some Big Birds

That last time I talked to Mr. Sargent, the United States Navy was trying to take out a 200-square mile area in the Gulf of Mexico off Alabama's coast to locate an electromagnetic pulse simulation device to test ships for hardening against an atmospheric nuclear blast.

He spoke out publicly against some bad science being conducted as part of that project by University of Southern Mississippi researchers. And along with a budding environmental and economic public movement against the project and some aggressive press, he helped to kill the program's $78 million line item in the Defense Department budget and put the EMPRESS II in dry dock - permanently.

I quoted Sargent in the first of about 40 stories I wrote on the subject. And since that story was one of my favorites in the series, you can now read it on this Web site in my old clip archive.

Research Ruffles Birders' Feathers

Sargent well remembers the EMPRESS battle and acknowledges that the publicity provided by a chain of newspapers along the Gulf Coast made the difference in that fight.

"It made the difference in us putting them out of business, permanently," he said.

The problem for the important migratory bird habitat on the Ft. Morgan peninsula today is the unchecked development in the area, he said, exacerbated in part by the annexation of that 22 miles of beaches and wildlife habitat by the city of Gulf Shores.

"We are still working to protect the birds and their habitat, trying to ensure the birds have a safe place to land," he said. "We've had some successs, but more failures. The free-wheeling development being carried out there now on a huge scale is a real problem. We may not be able to do anything to stop it. The only thing we can do is to speak out against it."

This week, Sargent and his team will be loading up the trucks and vans to head down to Ft. Morgan next weekend for the annual two-week-long bird banding excursion. The spring migration is especially important, since hundreds of bird species stop, rest and refuel with food in the Bon Secour National Wildlife refuge and the surrounding area after their long trans-Gulf flight from South and Central America. It is also important in the fall, when the birds stop there to rest and fatten up before heading south across the Gulf for the winter.

He said the much improved Mobile Press newspaper does a pretty good job of covering the issues there these days, although Gulf Coast Newspapers became very week chain indeed after my time there.

"But the newspapers can't change the laws," he said. "The Baldwin County Commission has never seen a developer they didn't like."

Another problem, he said, is the Alabama Legislature's underfunding of the Ft. Morgan Historical Commission.

He said there are some emerging stories along the Gulf Coast involving development scandals that include local government officials. But he declined to go into the details since there are ongoing investigations by law enforcement authorities as well as the press.

Sargent may be best known for his published studies of humming birds. The Hummer Study Group, a non-profit organization, is still going strong, he said.

As for the Clay Bird Fest, he said it is a small festival but important to his local community and the next generation's education into conserving the environment.

Mr. Sargent was surprised to hear the news that the community of Fultondale submitted more checklists in the Great Backyard Birdcount of 2006 than any other community in the United States or Canada, according to the official results from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society.

He said the bird count, while mostly conducted by mom and pop bird feeders and not real professional or amateur birders, "does provide some very important data."

Speaking of the environment and the press, Whit Gibbons, a professor of zoology and senior biologist at the University of Georgia, wrote a guest column in today's Tuscaloosa News which sets out the Top Ten List of Environmental problems facing the country and the world.

Sorry to give away your lead, Dr. Gibbons, but the conclusion is that the number one environmental problem facing us today is public "apathy."

Top Ten Lists and the Environment

We would add to the top of the list a lack of leadership on science and the environment out of the White House, where the priorities changed drastically after the election fiasco of 2000.

On another bird science note, while we were off traveling to New Orleans last week, there was another development in the ongoing controversy over the reported sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker in the Big Woods of Arkansas.

The upshot is that some researchers are questioning the validity of a recent video, which is reportedly the first sighting of a live ivory-bill in decades. You can read all about on the LiveScience.Com Web site.