Photo courtesy of Unsplash
NOTES & NEWS
By Ken Wiersema
Dungeness River Nature Center (DRNC)
The long and comprehensive search for the Center’s new Executive Director is over. Frank Lowenstein will be the New Executive director of the Center and will start on 5 September. Please look to the DRNC web site for an outline of his background and accomplishments; expect it to be posted soon. Watch the local media and the Center’s website for the announcement. The Center is also developing a new strategic plan led by a committee, chaired by Bob Steelquist, and facilitated by Deborah Jensen, the retired executive director of Audubon Washington. The OPAS members on the Center’s Board are participating in the process of deciding the path that the Center will guide upon over the next 5 years. With the new Executive Director and several new staff their plan is to make the transition seamless. OPAS will invite Frank to meet our Board in the near future.
So that you can be a part of the Center’s future, and support it, please consider becoming a member of the River Center as well as OPAS, if you’ve not done so. I know many of you have become dual members.
OPAS leaders Retreat
Your leaders met for a thoughtful day of evaluating, planning, budgeting, and organizing on 22 August. We realigned some elements of the President’s roles so that we can operate without a president in the forthcoming months. Bob Boekelheide has agreed to MC our monthly OPAS meetings, and Tom Butler will chair our monthly board meetings. Our OPAS representatives to the Board of the Center will be Marie Grad, Audrey Gift, and Ken Wiersema. Marie will be our representative on the Center’s Executive Committee. We also assessed the need for a hard copy newsletter and will be testing some alternatives in the coming year. Again, our gratitude to Mary Porter-Solberg for stepping up during Rob Hutchison’s illness to prepare the Harlequin Happenings for our members, while still maintaining and improving our website. We were delighted to see Mary attend our retreat, in person, this year and to welcome the week of Arizona monsoon she brought to us from the south. And a big THANK YOU to Rhonda Coats, and her committee, for organizing our OPAS retreat. Well done!
BirdFest ’24 update and planning for ‘25
At our final wrap-up meeting for last April’s BirdFest, we saw an income of $55,100 for the Center’s operation. Many of BirdFest’s events sold out. It was the best income stream ever for BirdFest, and we are planning to improve and provide new events for 2025. Many thanks, again, to the OPAS birders, helpers, and attendees for a special, successful, nature-focused event, to maintain and operate the Center. And of course, our gratitude to the team of planners and organizers led by Vanessa Fuller, who made it happen.
Education previews
The backyard birding team has drafted a full slate of programs to start on 7 September. The programs for September and October are in this edition. We’ll be reformatting several programs and putting an emphasis on new elements that explain the inseparable relationships among birds, habitat, landscaping, insects, and us humans. We’ll introduce several new presenters, as well as bring back members of our team with updated programs. Look for a list of the year’s programs in our next newsletter. We are also collaborating with the Center to offer a new sequence of classes for new birders, and those who are recent arrivals in our community. It will be titled “Bridge to Birding.” These classes will start in January 2025. Watch for announcements in our OPAS and the Center’s media. This will be a tuition class, with limited size; registration will be through the Center.