John Bates and Scott Harned installed the last 25 woodduck nesting boxes in Feburary 2001 this completes AWA commitment to TVA of installing 50 woodduck nesting boxes in the bottomland hardwood wetlands on Flint River bottoms.
Mallard Restoration Project (MRP)Fund raiser featuring Jim Hills with Frost Waterfowl Trust as guest speaker. AWA appreciates Mr. David Cole, Dr. Charles Whitworth and Tommy Whitworth for hosting this event. This event and project raised over $9,000 which afforded AWA to order 2,000 4 week old Frost Waterfowl Trust mallards to be released in Alabama. In mid June AWA banded and released 2,000 mallards in the state. This project inspired landowners to develop over 550 acres of new habitat that totaled over a million dollars in new habitat development in the Tennessee River Valley in 2000/2001.
Mallard Restoration welcomes Project Manager Mr. Flint Riordan
Jim Hills owner of Frost Waterfowl Trust offered AWA a rare opportunity, this was to train Flint Riordan of Montgomery to head up AWA's Mallard Restoration Program. Flint drove and trained at his own expense for three days at Georgetown, SC. Flint learned techniques and management procedures to setup landowners for MRP projects. Flint toured many of South Carolina Waterfowl Association's mallard projects and modeled AWA's program from this. Flint received 50 ducks from AWA and started a model project just south of Montgomery. Anyone wishing to participate in the MRP email AWA.
Joint Venture with Bibleonbands.orgThis organization's goal of placing every verse of the Bible on bands to be placed on mallards, this endeavor is sponsored by donations to Biblebands.org for this cause. Mr. David Melton of Dundee, Mississippi stated, "if one soul can be saved by this project it will be well worth it." The objective is someone will look up the verse that is on the band in the Bible and become inspired to accept the teachings. These bands are Gey bands the same specifications that AWA uses on bands.
Governor Siegelman's Alabama Commission of Environmental Initiatives (ACEI) AWA's CEO service on ACEI contributes to important legislation passed in this year's Alabama legislative session. Brownfield Redevelopment proposal accepted as law, this will keep industry from contaminating an area, then just fencing it off and developing elsewhere. Under this new law, before the industry or development can rebuild they have to clean up their contaminates and restore area back to a safe area. This will help keep more open land in our state and make industry use existing developments before just developing new lands. Isolated Wetlands Looses Protection in Alabama AWA brings isolated wetlands not being regulated in Alabama issue before ACEI on July 17, 2001. In a testimony before the commission and Governor Don Siegelman's director of policy, Mr. Nick Sellers, Jerry Davis inform the commission that Alabama is losing isolated wetlands because In a landmark ruling earlier this year the U. S. Courts pulled the regulatory teeth of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) on isolated wetlands in the U.S. (where no running stream is involved). This left the states to regulate and permit impacts to these isolated wetlands and pothole depressions which make up thousands of acres of very critical ecosystems in Alabama (many bottomland hardwood acres) and the U.S. In a July 12th, 2001 meeting with AWA and the Western Regulatory Branch of the Nashville District of the COE, Regulatory Specialist Mr. Forrest McDaniel, stated that, "Alabama is one of the few states that does not have anyone to regulate and permit procedure on impacts to the isolated wetlands and that the state just lost several acres of this nature to a pipeline development with no mitigation to isolated wetlands. This was a net loss of wetlands in Alabama." AWA Conservation Seed Program (CSP)The 2000 / 2001 CSP keeps on creating more wildlife habitat in Alabama rest of U. S. Thanks to Guntersville Feed and Western Supply AWA just keeps on subsidizing wildlife food plot planting by the private sector, 90,000 pounds of wheat seed, 65, 000 pounds of corn seeds, 45,000 pounds of grain sorghum, 25,000 pounds of sunflower. Also, the subsidies that AWA collects off the CSP has funded a large percentage of AWA's projects for the last six years. AWA has found soybean and sunflower with sunflower being the choice of deer for browse. Sunflower and soybeans planted in early August to be great to bow hunt over.
2000 Mallard Restoration Project
Well, AWA did it again. . . We had a very successful Mallard Banding. We banded and released another group of young Mallards as part of the ongoing effort of the Mallard Stewardship Program. Several people came out to Caney Creek Farms on Saturday, June 17, 2000. We had more kids this year thanks to the efforts of Mike Crawford and his group, KWAC (Kids in Waterfowling and Conservation). Many of the children had never had the opportunity to see these wild ducks up close. We had children ranging in age from 2 to 15 years old. The young ducks were wiggly while the banding was going on, but the kids did a wonderful job of not dropping any. This year AWA broke from tradition and put two leg bands on the birds. The first was the traditional AWA leg band and the second band was one that was sponsored by a local Arab Alabama church, Lifegate Baptist Church.
Mr. Mike King, a member of Lifegate, was responsible for getting this sponsorship. Mr. King, along with Anthony Hyatt and Glenn Capp, solicited the members of the church for this worthy cause. The members of Lifegate came through with a monetary donation for the purchase of the Christian oriented leg bands. The leg bands are numbered and have a partial Bible verse from John 3;7, "… Ye must be born again" and the phone number of the church.
AWA would like to thank all of the members, new and old, friends, and on-lookers who came out for this worthwhile cause. Without the support of the community, this type of release would not be possible. Again, a BIG THANKS to everybody!