Memories (sing with me now...)

Just this morning I received a note from a former colleague who's big into nature education for kids, wherein she asked how I got involved with crows. See, I'd sent her an email with some leads to Lancaster-area schools that might be interested in her train-the-teacher stuff to help teachers become better at enlightening kids about nature, and mentioned that I'd done some presentations about crows for kids at one of the places I'd told her about. She wrote back to thank me for the leads, and in that email she posed her question.

That got me thinking (yeah, I know, AGAIN) about the crows and how they started the League of Humane Voters in Central PA. For those of you who don't know the story, it's a nice one -- about how grassroots efforts pay off, how an issue that gets a lot of people upset can bring those same people together to do some good (and not just complain), and how one bad thing can be turned into lots of good things if people respond to the presence of negative forces in a positive way.

Just a few years ago, after frustrating failures in trying to move the 30,000+ migratory crows who find their way to Lancaster each year (as they have for centuries -- we have news items from the 1800s to prove it), several municipalities decided to hire the government to come in and poison the crows. The goal was not to poison each and every one of them, but to kill enough of them to scare the rest away. It was expensive, cruel (the poison could take up to 3 agony-filled days to kill), and put non-target species at risk. The toxin in question was also a dangerous one to allow into the groundwater and soil, with stacks of scary data compiled on it, much of which was not in the government's analysis as provided to the municipalities. Local officials were told it was safe and humane, but they were misinformed.

That said, I got really upset when I read about the plan to kill the crows. I started calling every bird group and wildlife-protection organization I could find, which resulted in calls and letters from all over the country (and some from Japan and the UK) finding their way into our newspapers, and calls came in from ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and animal advocates around the world, offering expert advice on how to better move the crows, in a non-lethal way.

One call that I received proved to be the most helpful. Two people from New York, who had started the League of Humane Voters there (and had seeded several other chapters in other states) suggested that the number of upset people locally could be a good start to forming an LOHV chapter here. We held an open meeting for all those concerned about the crows and a surprisingly large group of people showed up. We packed into a room at Carr's restaurant (thanks to a wildlife rehabber who was also a waitress there), and Peter and Anne Muller came down from NY and gave their LOHV presentation. They explained how just a small group of people could organize and reach out to voters, and then alter the path of legislation and elections. Virtually everyone there signed up to start an LOHV in Lancaster, and the Central Pennsylvania Chapter was born.

Within the year, the members of the LOHV and I had made so many trips to municipal meetings to talk about not poisoning the crows that I became known as "the Crow Lady" and the papers started printing articles that told both sides of the story. Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray was the first of the leaders to say "No more!" to the poison (his predecessor had actually signed on to the poisoning plan), and the other townships followed suit. The Crow Coalition was formed, with members from the LOHV and representatives from each of the municipalities, and we set about moving the crows that winter, using only non-lethal tools -- loud noises and light -- and were very successful. We relied heavily on citizen volunteers, and we were grateful and encouraged by the number of people willing to go out in the cold evenings to fire "screamers and bangers" (the pyrotechnics used to nudge the crows out of undesirable roosting locations).

In the meantime, the Central PA LOHV has grown, thanks to other galvanizing issues -- puppy mills and factory farming, mainly -- and our chapter has gone from hundreds to thousands of members. We helped spawn a chapter in the Greater Philadelphia area, and then another in Lehigh County. So I say the crows started the LOHV in PA, and they did -- and the dogs and countless farm animals helped grow it. We were giving a voice to the voiceless, by empowering voters, and the idea took hold.

My favorite part of the whole thing is that a bumper sticker that I made myself (it said "Killing Wildlife is Cruel and Stupid - visit www.lancastercrows.org") was what put me together with the first few people who worked with me to put the meeting at Carr's together and to get more people involved. It turns out people saw the sticker and visited the site, emailed it to their friends, and also got in touch with me via the site. People who didn't realize others were against the poisoning now had a way to find each other and that made it possible to form a group of people who wanted to make things happen (or in this case, NOT happen).

So the smallest thing can make a big difference. A bumper sticker sent people to the web, and some phone calls, begging for help, turned up lots of advice and the idea for an LOHV chapter. The crows were no longer poisoned, and a way to inform and activate voters on many wildlife and animal-related issues was born. All I can say is, "CAW!"