Hawk Mountain

Over the past weekend, I had the opportunity to travel and visit Hawk Mountain, a non-profit bird conservation site and organization. From a bird viewing standpoint, Hawk Mountain is bar none one of the best places I have ever been to; as a class the amount of birds of prey got to see was pretty astonishing and something that I, as a newly-established bird identifier, will remember for the rest of my life. With that being said the following reflection are the additional takeaways that I came away with from my trip.

Stepping into the Hawk Mountain visitor center and gift store, there was an evident version of nature that was trying to be conveyed to the consumer. The “nature” that Hawk Mountain was trying to embody with their visitor center is one that revolves around birds and in particular birds of prey. There were some books that had to with other areas of nature and conservation in general. For example in the book section I located a book about invasive species and another about sustainable gardening. Nevertheless, a majority of the store housed bird-centric memorabilia and knick-nacks, my favorite of which was bird-opoly because it seemed so ridiculous. Other than the useless merchandise, I did enjoy the overall layout of the center and especially the migration machine that made it very easy to understand the distance many of these birds of prey travel in a given year. The visual aspect to learning was incredibly effective at displaying just how incredible these birds are and need centers like Hawk Mountain to market just how impressive these birds are. The next takeaway I noticed was how Rachel Carson was not mentioned at all for what I can remember.

Rachel Carson’s connection to Hawk Mountain is that she used immature Bald Eagle population data gathered at Hawk Mountain in Silent Spring as evidence of DDT’s harmful effects on the environment. Regarding Rachel Carson, she is arguably the most polarizing and famous figure in conservation related sciences today. It was surprising to me that she was not mentioned at all by either the Hawk Mountain Handouts, or by the professional bird counter. Instead the focus was on a different leading lady in conservation, Rosalie Edge, the original founder of Hawk Mountain. To me the focus on Rosalie Edge was more fulfilling and interesting because I had not heard of her before Hawk Mountain, whereas I had known Rachel Carson and had read Silent Spring. The telling of her story really added some depth to my overall experience at Hawk Mountain and in a sense highlighted the fact that there are many deserving characters in conservation, yet are overlooked and sometimes forgotten due to the Carson’s and Leopold’s of the world. Connecting both Rachel Carson and Rosalie Edge to my next takeaway, there seems to have been a real change in culture from what the common perception of birds of prey were during their time and what it is now.

Prior to the installation of Hawk Mountain, birds of prey were looked at as pests to livestock and farmers, so they were constantly shot at. The persistent killing of these birds has waned over the years as consistent education surrounding birds of prey and conservation areas have become more prevalent, yet unfortunately to this day many birds of prey are still “accidently” killed by both hunters and civilians alike. Nevertheless, the major change surrounding birds of prey is this shift in thought that has come from community education efforts that has focused on discredited the fact these birds are pests. From my recollection from the Golden Eagle show most of these birds only reproduce up to the point the ecosystem they live in allow them to.  The reproductive system these birds have in place specifically allow them to conform to what an ecosystem can handle, so the population size itself does not become a problem. For this reason the more birds of preys that are in an ecosystem the higher likelihood that a given ecosystem is healthy and sustaining itself. To reiterate birds of prey have inherent adapted traits that allow them to specifically not become pests on an ecosystem. This fact is incredibly remarkable to me from the standpoint of how wrong people were 100+ years ago for shooting these birds and labeling them something they were simply not.

To conclude my experiences and takeaways from Hawk Mountain I will leave you with my opinion on the golden eagle show. Of all the activities, my least favorite was the golden eagle show because it was the antithesis of what the park was founded upon. The golden eagle was in obvious distress and emotional pain during the show and longer the show went on the more I felt the bird’s pain. The bird was being used to educate people, but looking back I could have done without seeing the bird just knowing the fact it was in a place that did not caused it pain and allowed it to live reasonably well. In the future I think this experience as changed my own opinion on animals in captivity and whether we are actually helping them by unnaturally keeping broken animals alive. It is a question generated by that experience that will keep me thinking for quite some time.

Cabela’s

After my trip to Hawk Mountain, I had the opportunity to also visit Cabela’s, a hunting and outdoor excursion mega-store. There were obvious differences between Cabela’s and Hawk Mountain, but in a way both tried to convey many of the same points involving nature and conservation. Cabela’s was more focused on the retail aspect and appeal aspect of nature, but that is also something Hawk Mountain tried to do as well with their gift store.

Unlike Hawk Mountain, the sense of “nature” that was presented in Cabela’s was extremely conflicting. On one side the store had many occurrences where they supported species conservation and sustainable practices. Then on the other hand along with many of consumers, there was a side that saw “nature” as this entity to exploit and take advantage of. This second side can best be seen from the exotic taxidermy section that housed many endangered or threatened species like the Bengali Tiger and the Elephant. Additionally, the taxidermy presented “nature” as this overly-magnificent entity because it only housed animals that were overly-large, or unique in their own right. This idea was substantiated by the fact that none of the taxidermy was from the east coast, nearly all the deer were from four states: Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Michigan. The Cabela’s was located in Pennsylvania, a state with a longstanding history with deer hunting, not presenting taxidermy specimen that were locally harvested made the “nature” presented in the store artificial and not something that I could recognize with. With this being said Cabela’s is just as much a museum as it is a retail store.

Of the many products being sold at the store, the gun-centric memorabilia was the odd products that caught my eye; there were gun plungers for god’s sake. The amount of gun centric products was a bit overwhelming because of all the horrible atrocities that have come from rampant gun purchasing, but I guess it is something that is extremely attractive to a certain population of consumers. Other than the guns, if you’re an outdoors person whether you are an avid ice fisherman looking for the artificial bait Gulp, or you are hunter looking for a new Bowie knife, Cabela’s literally has everything; it is a mega-store. Looking past the abnormal and the inherently outdoorsy stuff, there are a lot of normal, quality products for sale as well. Walking into Cabela’s one could buy Under Armor, Oakley, and North Face, all brands that could be bought any old clothing store. So what this all boils down to is this idea that Cabela’s is essentially a Macy’s with a slight touch of the outdoors.

The last detail I would like to mention from my experience at Cabela’s is the people that shop at Cabela’s. There was definitive visual difference between the overall crowd at Hawk Mountain and at Cabela’s. The people for the most part at Cabela’s were hunters, gun-advocates, ice fisherman, and the list goes on. The people at Hawk Mountain were naturalists, bird enthusiasts, and students. There was nothing wrong with either crowd, but I will say I had more laughs in the Cabela’s then I did at Hawk Mountain. One of my most memorable and funny experiences in Cabela’s was when I was in the gun room. I was looking at a gun case with Italian shotguns guns worth $7,000 and $9,500 in it. A tattooed, stout man walked right in front of me stared at the glass case, put his hands on it and then turned to his wife standing behind me. He waited for moment sort of looking at me and sort of at his wife and yelled with a slight Central Pennsylvania accent, “I guess we will wait for Black Friday.” I gave a chuckle, but the man seemed to not be kidding from the look on his face. People like one man I witnessed in the gun room epitomize what Cabela’s is, a high-quality outdoors store with a consumer base that is equally enamored with outdoor living, so much so they are willing to buy a $9,000 gun to prove their loyalty and unbounding love towards nature and the environment.