Teresa brings up a good point. Who wouldn't sacrifice gratifying a
thousand birding hobbyists to save a life? Still, it is too bad that
entirely legitimate concerns about drownings should hamper relatively
harmless activities like birding. One could, for example, argue that it
is the quarries' forbidden status that lures those teen-aged risk-takers
to swim there after dark; after all, there are plenty of places to go
swimming legally, where one may just as easily drown.
        Think about swimming. If you own a body of water in which a person
might drown, why shouldn't you protect yourself from legal liability by
forbidding trespassing (not just swimming, so as to include--just to be
sure--birders who might fall in as they incautiously ogle an eagle)?
Then, unless you believe swimming and birding are impermissible
everywhere, you should also vote for taxes to provide other bodies of
water where the government assumes the liability for such risky
activities. I agree this seems unfair; if I drown in my neighbor's pond,
my wife can sue for a zillion dollars, but if I drown at the state park
it's tough beans.
        If you'd like to meet the private sector, just go park on the public
roadside across from the Haul Road eagles' nest in Columbus. Rather than
an understandable concern about legal liabilities, the mission of the
security guards you'll meet is just corporate harassment and paranoia.
Citizens United, right?
        It's too bad a spotting scope looks superficially like an RPG, but one
reason most birders are lefties (at least as defined by righties who
resent government in all its functions) is that without public wild
lands most of us would be stuck inside now watching house sparrows and
starlings swarming the backyard feeder.
Bill Whan
Columbus


On 1/20/2011 9:09 AM, Teresa Backstrom wrote:
> These responses are not surprising, based on two drownings in Columbus
> quarries off of Dublin Rd. between the end of May and mid June 2010.

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