by Lori Turner, President

With our new season we are pleased to announce all of our accomplishments for the fiscal year of 2022 to 2023. We hope to see you at our October meeting with Edge Wade presenting on her beginning at birding and at some of our fieldtrips! Check the Events listing for all the great events we have scheduled!

Nature areas
CANS:
CANS was a site for a program of the Xerces Society called Bumblebee Atlas training, where they train people to monitor bee populations and such.
There will never be hunting at CANS but we helped push bow hunting at Bonnie View to help maintain a healthy deer population. This is very safe – each hunter has to take an extra course on urban hunting. We are monitoring the deer impact by installing enclosures in CANS.
Band with Nature was a success again for the 9th year. 2024 will be the 10th!
Coordinated with P&R to have a burn at Bonnie View in fall of 2022. We will have a burn in fall of 2023. That way, over wintering populations have a place survive.
Interpretive Educational panel on pollinators was designed, ordered and erected along the Scotts Branch Trail just east of CANS parking lot.
Plaque on rock placed near an approximately 200-year-old white oak to commemorate COMO’s Bicentennial.
A Stream Team took interest in a sampling study of Scott’s Branch Creek in CANS and Hinkson Creek in Wild Haven.

Wild Haven:
Had a couple clean up days at WH. These have included picking up tree limbs off trails, clearing brush and removing junk people have dumped.
New gate has been installed so people can now use the parking lot again.
Cleaned up around chimney for Chimney Swift with the guidance of Sarah Kendrick.
Louise Flenner, with help from others, created a self-guided moss walk for Wild Haven. It is available on our website and QR Code on kiosk.
Joanna Reuter revised the Wild Haven map.

Education
Lottie Bushmann and Lisa Schenker have been busy visiting students in classrooms and during field trips.
Last fall they met with several different elementary classes, educating them on birds and nature. Lottie helped with a program for children sponsored by Missouri River Relief at Bonnie View.
Lottie has been getting involved with the young birders club through MRBO. She took this group of teens to 3M to bird.
Lottie has been continuing First Friday walks, which is very popular with novice birders. Lottie is great at helping new birders spot a lifer or pointing out behavioral characteristics to help identify birds with only a quick glance.
We conducted the CBC and the migratory bird count again.
Stats on field trips:
• Sep 2022 to May 2023 – 20 field trips
• Average attendance – 16, ranging from 3 to 27.
• Average # of species – 25, ranging from 8 to 59.
• 2 summer trips scheduled – 3M with Lottie – 6-10-23 and 7-15-23

Donations or letters sent to support bird conservation efforts and bird tracking projects
Donated a total of $3500 (this total includes our membership’s donations that we matched to total $3500) to the Selva program to help buy the radio Motus trackers to attach to Cerulean Warblers in Colombia, this project will help bridge the knowledge gap between nesting sites and migration.
Wrote a comment letter regarding the proposed regulations for solar fields that Boone County P&Z created.
National Audubon Society created a sign-on letter that was sent to the house and senate leadership, urging for the prioritization of passage of the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act.
We found out the bill was reintroduced this spring, after it was dropped in the senate in December. We wrote another supporting letter, urging Sens. Hawley and Schmitt to pass the bill that will help conserve our nation’s wildlife by dedicating 1.3 billion for state-level conservation and 97 million to Tribal Nations to recover and sustain healthy bird, fish and other wildlife populations.
ComoGives donations totaled $11,600. A very important event that not only raises money for our group to stay active but also keeps CAS’ name out in the community of local non-profit groups.
We donated $30,000 to the building of the council house at the Nature School south of Columbia back in 2022. They started construction earlier this year and have made some progress over spring.
Wrote a letter of support to the USFWS for the preferred Alternative for the proposed boundary expansion of the Middle Mississippi River National Wildlife Refuge, between St. Louis and Cairo IL.
We showed our support of the Alspaugh’s family request to keep their property that they donated to P&R, a nature area with no sports facility.
Sent a letter of support for Alternative A for the Environmental Assessment for Wetland Mitigation at Swan Lake NWR.
We donated $2500 to support the Wood Thrush research project expansion that will utilize the Motus radio to track Wood Thrush populations during migration.
CAS has had a busy year, and thanks to our membership, we have been able to continue the high level of conservation-driven efforts. Thank you all, and I hope you see you at meetings and on fieldtrips this year!