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Tuesday, September 26, 2000
City hopes birders roost here after seeing Web site
Brochures, birding tournament also proposed as use of $75,000 grant to promote ecotourism
By Jonathan Osborne
Caller-Times
Tourism and city officials hope that sponsoring a national birding tournament and publishing brochures and a Web site to promote local wetlands and outdoor activities will send birders flocking to Corpus Christi.
"Apparently we're really big on the international birding scene," City Manager David Garcia said. "People come from all over the country to look at the various bird habitats here. This is a way to capitalize on it."
The Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries program awarded the city a $75,000 grant to develop the projects. All that's left is for the City Council to sign off on the grants today.
Two-thirds of the grant, or $50,000, will go to the Convention and Visitors Bureau, which will use the money to print brochures and sponsor the Great Texas Birding Classic in April 2001, one of the biggest birding events in the country, said Joey Jarreau, the bureau's interim chief executive officer.
The annual Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's birding extravaganza is touted as the biggest and longest birding tournament in the United States.
Birders scan hundreds of square miles of Texas coastal areas during the weeklong competition.
The brochures will point people to the birding and outdoor hot spots throughout the city, and hopefully lure more birders to Corpus Christi, he said.
"It will include complete information on outdoor sporting events, birding events or anything involving nature tourism," he said.
The remaining $25,000 will pay for the development of the Web site, which will be set up and run by the Texas Engineering Experiment Station at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
Robert Benson, a professor of physics at A&M-Corpus Christi and director for the Center for Bioacoustics, will lead the project.
"We're going to have, as the primary function, a site to give information about birding spots and nature-oriented activities that people could take part in along the Coastal Bend," said Benson, who studies bird sounds. "The highlight of that will be some Web cameras we're going to set up to showcase some of the birding spots around town."
The goal of the site, he said, will be to improve the visibility of Corpus Christi in the eyes of the bird-watching community.
"A lot of (birders) come to Texas, but they don't often enough come to Corpus Christi," he said.
Benson said the site is still in the planning stage but should be online by December.
Emilie Payne, a former warden for the National Audubon Society and birder since 1961, said the Corpus Christi is one of the best birding spots in the state.
"We have huge spring migrations and, this year, we've had one of the best fall migrations I have ever seen," Payne said.
And it's about time the city started promoting one of the area's best tourism attractions, she said.
"We're coming around," she said.
Staff writer Jonathan Osborne can be reached at 886-3716 or by e-mail at osbornej@caller.com
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