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Birding Trail Group Feathers Nest With Grants RALEIGH, N.C. (Dec. 12, 2005) – The North Carolina Birding Trail is more than $100,000 closer to reality, thanks to a series of grants. The N.C. Birding Trail is a proposed network of bird-watching sites across North Carolina, linked by highways and marketed as a single entity. Birding trails have proven to be successful in more than 30 states, generating millions of ecotourism dollars and providing financial incentives to protect vanishing bird habitat. Heading up the North Carolina initiative is a newly formed partnership consisting of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission and other wildlife and environmental organizations — the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service, N.C. Sea Grant, Audubon NC and N.C. State Parks. Since September the group has put together funding of $110,000 from public and private grant sources:
The funds will go toward promotional materials as well as development of the trail itself, said Salinda Daley, birding trail coordinator. “These monies move us closer toward implementation of a statewide birding trail that will bring economic, ecological and educational benefits to the citizens of North Carolina,” said Daley, a biologist with the Wildlife Resources Commission. Providing assistance to secure the grants were the North Carolina-based Cardinal Foundation and the N.C. Forestry Foundation. The economic benefits of birding trails can be considerable. The Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail, for example, links 300 viewing sites across 40 counties. In 1999, according to an economic analysis, most bird-watchers who used the trail came from outside the region, spending an average of 31 days per year on the trail and spending $78.50 per person per day. For more information
about the North Carolina Birding Trail, log onto www.ncbirdingtrail.org,
or e-mail
info@ncbirdingtrail.org.
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