WESTERN CUYAHOGA AUDUBON SOCIETY

Our single goal is to educate the public about the importance of preserving habitat for the benefit of birds and people. Our motto is “connect, educate, and conserve. We are a conservation organization, but people know us as a birding organization because our namesake is nineteenth-century naturalist John James Audubon.

In order to accomplish our goal, we educate the public through four strategies: chapter activities, community outreach, citizen science, and board member recruitment. Here is a list of objectives we pursue to accomplish these strategies:

> Speaker programs at the Rocky River Nature Center on the first Tuesday of each month from September through May covering different aspects of natural science, free and open to the public. Consult the Cleveland Metroparks Emerald Necklace and wcaudubon.org.
> Field trips with knowledgeable leaders on a variety of conservation subjects, from bird walks to water treatment plants.
> Our newsletter, The Feathered Flyer, and website www.wcaudubon.org, containing information on all of our activities.
> Annual Christmas Bird Count, ending with a potluck dinner and silent auction.
> Sale of shade-grown coffee at our monthly membership meetings. This protects habitat for migratory birds in South and Latin America.
> Participation as judges in the Northeast Ohio Science and Engineering Fair.
> Community outreach programs associated with the natural world.
> Community partner with the Cleveland International Film Festival.
> Annual participation in the Zoo Nature Club to provide an underserved school on the west side of Cleveland with nature opportunities.
> Participation in the year-round Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve bird surveys.
> In 2006, Western Cuyahoga Audubon began conducting surveys to collect data on bird populations in the Rocky River Important Bird Area (East Branch). This is a tract of land that the National Audubon Society designated as critical habitat for birds. Cleveland Metroparks works to acquire private property along the East Branch between North Royalton and Hinckley in order to create contiguous parkland around Greater Cleveland. Our on-going bird surveys and letters of support serve to bolster their funding efforts to purchase this property.
> Our chapter supports public policy issues, such as the need to restore the renewable energy standard in Ohio.
> We conduct discussions on climate change in order to raise everyone's level of consciousness about the need to protect our planet.
> Western Cuyahoga Audubon promotes alternative sources of energy to burning fossil fuel, such as solar power and the proper sighting of wind turbines.
>Western Cuyahoga Audubon educates and provides information to the public to support and encourage well-informed decision-making.

We have a seasoned board of ten members who share the load of administrative duties that keep the organization going. We also have 100 Chapter Supporters who pay dues that WCAS keeps to defray the cost of our activities. We have a website, newsletter, and trifold (https://goo.gl/hwpGj1) that inform the public of our organization.

We have made WCAS a popular conservation and birding organization in Northeast Ohio.