For this year's Party for the Pumpkins, a now annual event celebrating Fall at the Arboretum State Botanical Garden of Kentucky, the Central Kentucky Audubon Society brought in several "Halloween Birds" from the Liberty Nature Center. Four owls and a black vulture descended upon the Arboretum to entertain the many young visitors and their families who attended the event. The Liberty Nature Center is a raptor rehabilitation facility located in Somerset, Kentucky. They house a number of education birds like those they brought. The Center is unique, however, in that it is primarily run by teenage volunteers, most from Southwestern High School. The birds drew crowds all day, as expected. We were impressed to find that the students were so professional in their roles that very few of the event's attendees even realized how young the Liberty "staff" actually was. Special thanks to the Liberty Nature Center volunteers for making the trip and for bringing their "spooky" birds. 

We don't have much undeveloped land in Fayette County. Most of it is horse farm, urban, subdivision, or downtown. So when the largest patch of land on Reservoir #4, a peninsula off Squires Road across from the Lake Ellerslie Fishing Club trails where many CKAS and ASK members have birded for years, is offered for sale and development, many of our members brought the proposal to the attention of our Board. This area, comprised of young forest, open meadow, and riparian buffer, is known habitat for great blue heron, ducks, cormorants, grebes, coots, bald eagles, osprey, wild turkey, cooper, sharp-shinned and red-tailed hawks, black crowned night heron, green herons, great egrets, pileated, downy, and red-bellied woodpeckers, flickers, sapsuckers, kingfishers, kingbirds, waxwings, warblers, and a variety of other birds, as well as deer, coyote, and occasionally fox.

At stake are approximately ninety acres (the undeveloped area in the center of this link), currently owned by Kentucky American Water and zoned Agricultural (A-U). KAW has proposed to sell the land to Ball Homes for rezoning to Planned Residential (R-3) and High Density Apartment (R-4). Roughly three-fourths of the area would become single-family homes and a school; a quarter of it would become a 308-apartment high-density complex; very little of it would remain good habitat. The request does take measures to protect some of the older trees in this area, including a 300-year-old Burr Oak, but the city assessments of this area fail to account for the diversity of wildlife currently supported. Many CKAS members have expressed their dismay regarding the expected impact on the resident wildlife, the likely impacts on area traffic and the sewer system, the potential impact on the water quality from lawn care chemical and other run-off, and the lack of the proposal's clarity regarding any planned retention of riparian buffer.

If you are similarly concerned about residential and high density development in this area, please come to the hearing on November 17th at 1:30pm on the second floor of the LFUCG Building and voice your dissent. You don't need to live nearby--the hearing is open to the public. Keep in mind that it is not necessary to make a public comment if you attend; each person's presence has an important impact.  You can also submit written comments if you can't come or prefer not to speak at the meeting; please send them to planningmailbox@lexingtonky.gov or by mail to Chair of the Planning Commission (Mr. Bill Wilson), 200 E. Main St., Lexington, 40507.

If you feel CKAS should take a stand on this proposal one way or the other, please send an e-mail to president@ckas.org. Members of the Board are already leaning toward opposition, a stand we feel aligns with our habitat protection directives. You can keep up with news regarding the proposal by joining the Squires Road Development public FaceBook group.