Bird Conservation Network

Executive Committee

Minutes: October 2, 2002

In attendance: Donald Dann, Bob Fisher, Judy Pollock, Lee Ramsey

North Park Village: CAS has asked us to join them in opposing the transfer of North Park Village from the Chicago Department of the Environment to the Chicago Park District. We discussed this and decided to have Bob draft a letter to the Mayor’s office in support of the CAS position, and then poll our coalition members to see if they support sending the letter.

We settled on meeting places for the next two meetings. The October 19 meeting will be held at the Williamsons home, and the January 18 meeting will be at the Garfield Park Conservatory. We also discussed possible candidates for officers and a nominating committee for 2003, and came up with a few suggestions that will be pursued in the coming weeks.

West Nile Virus: Judy will ask for volunteers to collect additional research on this subject and look into the possibility of doing a monitoring study of chickadee populations in the Chicago area.

Randi Doeker has found a potential business/commercial member for BCN. Bob will have her suggest that the company make an application for membership. The ExComm consensus was that there was little downside and considerable upside for companies and businesses joining the BCN coalition. A review of our bylaws indicated there was no barrier to this type of organizational member.

Greater Chicago Birding Trail: Donald, as chair of the Bird Treaty Committee, is convening a committee to study and move ahead on this project. He has contacted each club, and those interested in being included on the committee should contact him.

Dogs at Montrose: We have a report that the city is officially “being lax” in enforcing restrictions against dogs on the Montrose Beach. Judy suggested that we re-send our 13 March 2001 letter to Jerry Adelman, chair of the Mayor’s Committee.

Mary Anne has proposed transferring the BCN financial records to Quicken. We agreed that this is a good idea.

Judy is still working on finding a source of matching funds for the $10,000 Chicago Wilderness grant, in support of our monitoring database.