A fledgling birding festival that hatched 15 years ago has become an international event drawing visitors from around the world to northwest Ohio. While the stars of the show at the Biggest Week in American Birding (BWIAB) are migrating warblers, there are dozens of other species which draw crowds from every state and continent including wading and shore birds, tanagers, songbirds, waterfowl and raptors.

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Alberto Rey’s artistic passions are wide-ranging. But water and wildlife may most succinctly describe them. The retired State University of New York at Fredonia professor of art has waded into drawing, painting, ceramics and filmmaking all while diving headfirst into the deepest affection for the natural world.  

The 64-year-old Cuban-born artist moonlights as an Orvis-endorsed fly fishing guide on Western New York’s Lake Erie tributaries.

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Just-announced staff cuts and hiring freezes from the Trump administration will jeopardize the ongoing success of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) decades-long battle against sea lamprey, according to officials. While states, provinces and U.S. and Canadian tribes are involved in the labor-intensive efforts, the USFWS performs most of the in-stream treatments in the U.S.

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In the Great Lakes region alone, Ducks Unlimited (DU) has been involved in hundreds of projects in the past decade that involve either the conservation of wetlands through acquisition, or the restoration and management of wetlands. These projects — always in concert with public and private partners, universities and other organizations — seek to establish or conserve the maximum amount of acreage possible with available funds.

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On August 2, it will be 10 years since officials in Toledo alerted residents in the early morning hours not to drink, bathe in or otherwise come into contact with tap water from the Collins Park Water Treatment Plant. For nearly three days chaos reigned, as bottled water sold out that first day before dawn and disappeared from shelves in the region the next day.

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Captains were few and far between in 1979, when Tibbels Marina in Marblehead, Ohio got into the fishing charter business on Lake Erie. A few years earlier, in 1975, the state had 46 captains on Lake Erie. A few years later, when the Tibbels family launched its first boat, there were about 156.

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The Biggest Week in American Birding draws a worldwide audience to glimpse dozens of species of migrating birds including the stars of the show, tiny warblers, as well as local birds in northern Ohio — and officials say they’ve been seeing changes in recent years.

“There appears to be a little shifting in the short-distance migrants versus the tropical migrants,” said Mark Shieldcastle, research director at Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO), event host.

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In 1979, there were just four nesting pairs of bald eagles in the entire state of Ohio. Today there are more than 900 pairs spread throughout all but three of Ohio’s 88 counties, not including the immature birds that still appear mottled with brown and white because haven’t yet developed white plumage on their heads.

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Lake Erie covers about 9,900 square miles and stretches 240 miles from southwest to northeast with an average depth of 62 feet. It borders four states and the province of Ontario. About 12 million people live in the watershed, including 17 major metropolitan areas. More than 10 million people rely on the lake as a source of drinking water.

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The path of totality during the April 8 solar eclipse is expected to run directly across northwest Ohio, keeping tourism officials in the area, who normally plan for crowds to begin arriving in May, extra busy.   

Some private campgrounds in the area that are opening early for the eclipse and have sites available, including Crystal Rock, Erie and Ottawa County fairgrounds, Cedarlane RV Resort, Camp Sandusky and Camp Perry RV Park.

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