Birders Flock Together In Quest to Return To Bay Bridge-Tunnel
In Face of Terrorism Concerns, Nature Lovers Crafted a Strategy
By Carol Morello
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 14, 2005; A01
CAPE CHARLES, Va. -- Screenwriters and cartoonists often cast
bird-watchers as timid eccentrics in funny hats with Sibley guides
sticking out from their safari jackets and binoculars around their
necks. The perfect disguise for a terrorist, perhaps?
But serious ornithologists tend to have a bit of Indiana Jones in
them. Ned Brinkley, for one, has driven into hurricanes looking for
birds blown off course to unusual places. He has floated through
swamps searching for evidence that the ivory-billed woodpecker is not
extinct. And he was not about to knuckle under meekly when he learned
that officials worried about terrorism were about to ban visitors from
the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, one of the best birding spots on the
East Coast.
Ever since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have grown
accustomed to probes into their private lives and a great many new
restrictions. From full-body searches at airport boarding gates to
barricades around the Capitol, the nation has accepted many intrusive
and prohibitive security measures as the price of safety.
Bird-watchers are oddly vulnerable to the new scrutiny. They carry
binoculars, scopes and cameras. They like to go to such places as
buffer zones around military bases and nuclear power plants, where
lots of birds roost. They are sometimes turned in to police by
suspicious passersby.
This time, Brinkley and a few cohorts were prepared to fight back.
Their successful effort to regain access to the bridge islands
illustrates how it is possible to continue their activities, even in a
security-conscious age. But it requires concessions that once would
have been considered extreme. It is a predicament many Americans are
facing.
Today, the commission overseeing the span is scheduled to vote on a
compromise negotiated with the bridge's executive director and head of
security. Under the plan, scientists and researchers would be allowed
to go on the islands that connect the bridge once they get a pass,
renewed annually. Amateur bird-watchers would have to submit to a
security check several weeks in advance and pay $50 an hour for a
police escort.
"Why allow people whose intentions we don't know [to] dictate how our
lives as Americans, our lives as Virginians, our lives as
bird-watchers, are restricted?" asked Brinkley, who runs a
bed-and-breakfast in Cape Charles when he is not leading bird-watching
tours.
"It's patriotic to question bureaucratic decisions that impinge on our
liberties. Are we vigilant or cowards? Are we creative, or passive and
lazy?"
Their success also illustrates that bird-watchers have friends in high plac=
es.
They conferred with security experts who have worked for places that
know a thing or two about counterterrorism tactics -- the Pentagon,
State Department, United Nations, airports and nuclear power plants.
They boned up on threat scenarios involving biological weapons and
researched padlocks and high-tech ID cards. They offered to undergo
criminal background checks and take crime-watch training.
"At some point, you have to choose between your lifestyle and
increasing your security," said Tim Travan, a former U.N. weapons
inspector in Iraq who advised the bird-watchers on counterterrorism
issues. "If you give up too many civil rights and have too-draconian
security, what exactly is it you are protecting?"
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, a 17.6-mile span that costs $17
round-trip for a passenger car, connects Virginia's Eastern Shore with
the mainland at Virginia Beach. The entrance and exit of two tunnels
in the middle of the bay are secured by small, man-made islands of
granite boulders. At the southernmost island, there is a restaurant
and a fishing pier open to the public.
The three northern islands are popular with bird-watchers. The
authority that operates the bridge has courted birders with ads in
premiere ornithological journals. Bird-watchers consider it a special
place to observe up to 350 species of birds, like being on a ship in
open water.
Until this year, visitor passes were handed out almost casually. A
mailed or faxed request routinely secured a letter of permission
granting access to the islands for a year.
That changed after a risk analysis by the state Department of
Transportation. It warned that the air-intake buildings providing
ventilation to the tunnels were prone to sabotage, said Steven M.
Mondul, state director of the Office of Security and Emergency
Management. Homeland Security authorized a $1.3 million grant to
secure the ventilation.
The report triggered a rethinking of the entire approach to security.
Last year, 800 letters of permission were handed out to birders who
provided little more identification than a driver's license. The
authority concluded that it had not screened visitors well or kept
tabs on their movements. Allowing the public, even bird-watchers, was
a potential threat.
"Everybody knows that post-9/11, we can't do anything like we did
before," said Clement M. Pruitt, head of the bridge's police force.
"Anybody who can fly planes into the twin towers can find ways to
circumvent our rules."
No one questioned the need for more security on the bridge, located
just north of the largest Navy base on the East Coast.
"We believe this is in the top 100, if not the top 20, terrorist
targets in America," Brinkley said. "We accept their assessment of the
threat."
Short of a specific threat, however, many wondered if the ban
accomplished its intended purpose. Why keep the southernmost island,
with its restaurant and pier, open to the public? Why allow fishing
boats to approach? And would a fence around the ventilation buildings
really keep out a determined terrorist?
"We've all come to realize we're living in a different world," said
Mitchell A. Byrd, an ornithologist at the College of William and Mary
who has been observing birds on the bridge since it opened in 1964.
"Some of our rights, like the total freedom of movement to do what you
want to do, are compromised. The issue is, to what purpose?"
Many wondered what might be sacrificed next.
"If this would help protect this great land of ours by giving up part
of a privilege, I would do so willingly," said Alice Wheeley, a real
estate broker who has been an avid bird-watcher for 40 years. "But you
kind of wonder, if you give up one privilege, how many more are you
going to give up, and why?"
In April, after hundreds of bird-watchers had mailed in objections,
the bridge authority offered an alternative plan. There would be no
annual permits; groups would be admitted by prior arrangement. And
they would have to pay for an off-duty police officer to accompany
their every step.
But the birders contended that the advance notice was unworkable.
Nobody could predict when a hurricane would hit, driving in many
seabirds rarely seen in Virginia.
Lucius Kellam III, the bridge authority's interim executive director
and son of the man for whom the bridge is named, was willing to find a
compromise.
"Obviously, it can be done," he said. "The question is, at what cost
and who pays?"
With Brinkley in the lead, the birders started researching.
Byrd called the Surrey nuclear power plant, which birders pass to get
to a state refuge on Hog Island. Both coming and going, visitors to
the refuge must stop so guards can check under their hoods.
Brinkley consulted with J. Christian Kessler, who heads the State
Department's office dealing with export control and conventional arms
nonproliferation. He also birds on the bridge.
"The fact is, certain security is necessary," said Kessler, who passes
two checkpoints en route to his own office. "On the other hand, we can
reach a point where the steps we're taking to protect our security
start to so change the way we live that, in essence, we've permitted
the terrorists to make us different than we want to be. And to give up
some of what we valued and made us different and special."
After a month of imagining ways to thwart a terrorist, Brinkley
recommended a middle ground replete with security measures, which he
said was preferable to "handing victories to al Qaeda and other
terrorist groups without a strong effort to maintain the lives we have
lived and that we love."
He suggested that birders get access to the bridge islands by
submitting to background checks with national law enforcement
agencies, including the CIA and the FBI; agreeing to vehicle checks
with undercarriage mirrors and searches by explosives-sniffing dogs
and Geiger counters; and paying for identity cards that have magnetic
strips. He further recommended the tunnels be equipped with detection
devices for chemical and biological agents.
The birders pronounced themselves grateful for even the limited access.
Brinkley's only regret is that he could not convince anyone of the
merits of training bird-watchers to be on the lookout for terrorists.
"I think there could have been a core of people who would be black
belt bird-watchers," he said. "But no one wanted to coordinate it."
DW Holmes
Washington, DC
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