Doing Good For Profit

As a wildlife photographer, it’s easy for me to be on the “right side” of conservation issues. After all, my work directly benefits from it. For others, the benefits are not as obvious, or worse, conservation seems a pure cost with no direct benefit at all. It might seem that way but there is another way to look at it. As one politician put it, “it’s about the economy, stupid!” Just a note, he was calling himself stupid by forgetting that in the first place, and getting caught up in the politics of the moment.

In my past life, as the director of engineering for a large food processing corporation, I saw wasted resources as an opportunity for conservation within the corporate operation. To the company’s credit, they told me to go ahead, “just be cost neutral.” As one of the vice-presidents bluntly put it “we don’t pay you to find problems, we pay you to solve them in a profitable way.” In other words, it wasn’t enough for me to point out we wasted resources, like water and electricity. I needed to find a path to reduce that waste without bankrupting the company in the process. In then end, we reduced our water usage by about 50% and our electrical by about 40%.

Village Creek Landing, St Simons Island

The key was looking at savings in relation to the total cost of ownership vs. the initial cost. This is where I think Georgia’s conservation efforts on the coast needs to look too. We have to look at the economic costs as well as our desire to be good stewards to offset the sticker shock value upfront. We have wonderful saltmarsh coastline. Truly an incredible resource. Costs and efforts spent today might not be readily seen as a cost benefit, but imagine if the marshes were gone. What would that cost be? What would we be willing to pay to restore them?

Without our saltmarshes, we can kiss the approximately $310 million in yearly revenue from fishing good bye. That’s the amount a 2022 University of Georgia Marine Extension study lists for fishing annually, not to mention the over 3,000 jobs the industry adds to the local landscape. And that’s just fishing! The consequence would be much broader than that. Georgia’s $4 billion in tourism revenue would take a huge hit.

Compared to the millions earned, the economic benefit to local communities, and the tax revenue, spending several million annually on conservation seems like a deal that benefits the whole state. The point is, while budget dollars are always spoken for, it just makes sense to invest some on our natural resources.

I am sure North Georgia could make similar arguments regarding the autumn changing of the seasons. Conservation is, after all, a statewide issue. Without question, we need to invest in all of Georgia’s natural resources, it’s not just good conservation stewardship - it’s good economic stewardship too.

The best choice is to leave politics out of it. It’s not a conservative or liberal issue, it’s an economic one that cuts across the political spectrum. We have to judge conservation efforts in terms of their impact on cost and revenue, in addition to the traditional reasons to take care of our home. So next time you hear political talking-heads rambling on, for or against, spending tax dollars on environmental issues, they just want your vote. We need to think about the long-term impact on our economy as well as the environment. Always remembering that while we don’t have unlimited funds to spend doing nothing just might be the most costly economic option Georgia can undertake.

Why Georgia is so important to the Atlantic Flyway

The Portion of the Atlantic Flyway that crosses the United States

The Atlantic Flyway acts as the primary avian migration route in the Americas. It runs from Greenland in Canada to Tierra del Fuego in South America, some 8,800 miles. Not all birds use the entire length of the Flyway, in fact most use just a portion when traveling between feeding and nesting grounds. The Atlantic Flyway is, simply put, a migration path across North & South America that provides good food, water and shelter while avoiding mountain ranges like the Appalachian and Andes.

As a wildlife photographer, my primary interest in the Atlantic Flyway is the opportunities it provides me to capture images of birds as they pass through. I am eternally grateful to people all along its length that attempt to protect it. While there is certainly more conservation work to be done, the health of today’s Flyway owes much to the efforts stated in the 1960s and 1970s. I’ve spent over 50 years wondering Georgia’s marshes and can say without question we have more birds today than when I was a kid. To me, it proves conservation work.

Link: https://onehundredmiles.org

Even knowing that past efforts have paid off, there is more work to be done and conservation diligence must be maintained. Recently, groups like 100 Miles, applied pressure to our state elected officials and defeated HB 370, a bill that would have allowed for more private use, ownership, and ultimately development, of Georgia’s marshes. It just goes to show that forces still exist that are a danger to Georgia’s delicate saltmarsh ecosystem. If we do not protect our saltmarshes, and by extension our portion of the Flyway, we endanger all of it. The choices we make as Georgians will impact the health the entire Atlantic Flyway.

It’s All About The Saltmarshes

Migrating Birds At Sunrise, Village Creek Marsh

While every state that the migration path touches in the United States is important to the flow of birds, north-south and south-north, Georgia is the place where the great river-like flow of the flyway becomes one or breaks apart, depending on the season. It makes our few miles of marsh covered coastline a major junction for migrating birds.

Coastal Georgia in a unique wonder, its biodiversity is hard to overstate. Made up of 14 primary islands connected with over 400,000 acres of saltmarsh, our coast acts as one big breading ground, attracting all sorts of sea life that attracts all sorts hungry critters. It’s no wonder migrating birds make Georgia a stop along their journey.

While Georgia’s 100 miles of coastline consist of only about 1% of the total length of the Atlantic Flyway, each mile of it is put to good use.

Georgia’s Flyway Notes:

• Over 350 species of birds migrate through our area each season.

• While the total count of migrating birds is impossible to know, it’s big – over 700 million birds use the it during each migration period. A good portion will either stop in our saltmarshes or at least pass overhead.

• The spring migration is shorter and more densely packed, providing the best opportunities for seeing our avian travelers.