Travel writing is the topic, especially travel in Oregon. I’ll be the guest on the Jefferson Exchange, on Jefferson Public Radio, this Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 9 a.m.
Travel writing and Oregon are two of my favorite subjects! I’ve written travel pieces for Smithsonian, the New York Times, Oregon Business Magazine, and dozens of other outlets.
Ironically, this JPR interview messes up some of my travel writing plans. I have an assignment to go to the Klamath Basin to view the bald eagles there. I’ll be writing an article about the bald eagle fly-out for the travel section of the Oregonian.
ETA: You can now read about those birding adventures.
Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge
As the government website explains:
The Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge located in rural northeastern California and Southern Oregon, was established by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 as the Nation’s first waterfowl refuge.
The Lower Klamath Refuge is managed out of Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge’s visitor center as a part of Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex which is comprised of 6 different refuges located in Southern Oregon and Northern California.
The refuge, with a backdrop of 14,000-foot Mount Shasta to the southwest, is on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark.
The 50,092-acre refuge is a varied mix of intensively managed shallow marshes, open water, grassy uplands, and croplands that provide feeding, resting, nesting, and brood-rearing habitat for waterfowl and other water birds.
This refuge is one of the most biologically productive refuges within the Pacific Flyway.Approximately 80 percent of the flyway’s migrating waterfowl pass through the Klamath Basin on both spring and fall migrations, with 50 percent using the refuge. Peak waterfowl populations can reach 1.8 million birds, which represent 15 to 45 percent of the total birds wintering in California.
The refuge produces between 30,000 and 60,000 waterfowl annually.The refuge is also a fall staging area for 20 to 30 percent of the central valley population of sandhill crane.
From 20,000 to 100,000 shorebirds use refuge wetlands during the spring migration. Wintering wildlife populations include 500 bald eagle and 30,000 tundra swan.
Spring and summer nesting wildlife include many colonial water birds, such as white-faced ibis, heron, egret, cormorant, grebe, white pelican, and gulls.
In all, the refuge provides habitat for 25 species of special concern listed as threatened or sensitive by California and Oregon.
This Wednesday was my preferred time to go. But NPR and talking about travel writing comes first, so I’ll take the trip to K Falls next week.
Updated to add: My article in the Oregonian about viewing bald eagles in the Klamath Basin is available on-line here.
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Published: December 8, 2008
Updated: October 21, 2021
anjie says
Shoot! It’s 9:45 and I missed it! Has it been archived anywhere online? Anjie
admin says
They promised there would be a podcast available later today, Anjie. Right now this is all I can find on the Web: http://www.ijpr.org/onlineaudio2.asp?SectionID=1012&programId=11. But I’ll post a link when it goes live. Sorry you missed it!