Web Site Designed To Draw Birders
Proponents of nature-based tourism hope the debut of the Oregon Coast Birding Trail Web site will draw bird-watchers and their pocket books to area shoreline communities.
The site offers a self-guided driving itinerary highlighting the prime locations for observing birds along the Oregon Coast and into Northern California. Local birders, wildlife professionals and tourism specialists produced the guide, which highlights 173 birding hotspots, including Gnat Creek Campground, Coxcomb Hill, Fort Stevens State Park and the Necanicum estuary.
The increasing popularity of birding can translate into a vibrant economy for coastal communities:
- According to the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife, in 2001, nearly 22 million people, or 10 percent of the U.S. population, watched wildlife away from home; more than 18 million of these people watched birds.
- More than 5.8 million people left their home state specifically to watch birds.
- These 22 million wildlife watchers took a total of more than 230 million trips averaging two days in length, and they spent more than $8 billion on trip-related expenses.
Birding “is an amazingly lucrative and popular market,” said Betty Nicholson, of Lincoln County, who helped plan the trail project. “More than 1.7 million people spent more than $2 billion on watching wildlife in Oregon in 2001. This is not just about bird-watching – it’s about restaurants, hotels, antique stores and services.”
Oregon hosted nearly 1.7 million wildlife watchers, 509,000 of whom were non-residents. These Oregon visitors spent more than $300 million in the state on trip-related expenses, ranking Oregon fifth in the nation.
Photo by lonesome cowboy glen.
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