A resolution for San Antonio to stop moving birds, trees and park visitors

This article was originally published on Deceleration

A resolution passed last month at LULAC’s state convention highlights attacks on birds and trees in Brackenridge Park — and how they relate to the civil and ceremonial rights of local Indigenous and Latinx communities.

The city of San Antonio must end its policy of harassing migratory birds in Brackenridge Park and throughout city parks, according to Texas-based members of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC. The resolution challenging years of city policy to hunt wildlife normally protected by the federal government was passed at the 95th Annual Texas State Convention held last month in Odessa, Texas, while developing the policy priorities of the nation’s oldest civil rights organization for Latinas and Chicanes.

San Antonio-based LULAC delegates today announced the adoption of a resolution supporting the preservation of Brackenridge Park’s migratory birds and heritage trees, as well as the right of Indigenous and Latinx communities to access one San Antonio’s most popular public parks for historical, ceremonial, and cultural purposes.

“I am pleased that we submitted this resolution to the local and state levels, and that it passed. Because we know the importance (of this issue) especially for our Latinos here in San Antonio,” said Claudia Sánchez, a member of San Antonio’s local LULAC delegation who also helped organize around the plan. city ​​climate action.

“We think there might be ways to solve this problem without killing them, without removing the birds and without removing their nests, because they are native there,” Sánchez said. “But we find that they haven’t really worked with the community to find a solution without completely tearing them down.”

The expulsion of migratory birds that have historically nested in San Antonio’s public parks is essential not only to Brackenridge’s redevelopment interests, embodied in the quasi-private Brackenridge Park Conservancy, but also to parks policy more broadly. Since 2019, the City of San Antonio has worked with state and federal wildlife management agencies to escalate a campaign of forced bird evictions, including “radically altering” Bird Island habitat in Lake Park Elmendorf and Brackenridge Park.

The City has a federal permit to harass and kill, if deemed necessary, birds in the park system that are normally protected by the International Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Species targeted in the City’s permit include the cormorant, snowy heron and cattle egret and authorizes the use of a range of tools including auditory, pyrotechnic and chemical harassment. Snowy egrets are listed as the species of greatest conservation need in Texas, as are other birds that have been targeted by the city’s efforts and that coexist in or near egret colonies, including herons tricolors, small blues and greens.

The former president of the local Audubon Society warned of the city’s attacks on birds in 2019, when the city claimed the birds posed a danger to U.S. Air Force pilots at Kelly Field:

“You can’t disturb this species of cattle egret without disturbing the fish-eating egrets that it likes to nest with: the great white egret and the snowy egrets. The Great Egret that graces our San Antonio shores happens to be the logo bird of the National Audubon Society. As you know, when you start trying to play with nature, often unforeseen consequences can arise.

Data provided by the city at the time alluded to four bird strikes occurring on the airstrip involving cattle egrets, out of about 50 strikes per year, over a period of about nine years.

Recent research has highlighted the remarkable decline in bird populations in North America: 30 percent of the total bird population since 1970, or a staggering three billion birds.

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