Pepper Flavored Buntings

By Matt Heyden

OK, I admit it, I'm not really giving you a recipe to "cook" buntings. But pepper does have something to do with buntings. When the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival ended this year, it was discovered that very few field trips had seen Painted Buntings. The Canaveral Marshes trip has always been able to produce them reliably, but something was different this year.

The habitat was being overrun with Brazilian Pepper which is a non-native very aggressive invasive tree. The residential community was not only unaware of the pepper problem, but less than 1 % of the residents had ever seen a Bunting. Worse, they may not have cared.

Now some background here. We're talking about The Great Outdoors in Titusville which is a very special community, surrounded by thousands of acres of conservation land. What makes it really different is that it's on 3,300 acres, much of which is protected conservation area. Obviously this is a great place for birders like myself to live. So they had all this wildlife, and wonderful birding, but it was about to disappear. See the problem? See the connection between my Painted Buntings and the Brazilian Pepper? One had to go. A quick tour showed that the Brazilian Pepper was EVERYWHERE. The conservation areas were full, the pools were surrounded, and it was coming up in owner's outdoor train layouts! (Well I told you it was a special community!) Even the church was surrounded, yet no one could see it.

I had to ask myself if I was ready to wage a war at my cost and suffer the consequences. I didn't want to, but to save my buntings, I dropped hints to try to get others to do it. These sound like: "You know what should really be done here is..." These are easy to do. While everyone agreed something should be done, no one was going to launch the attack, so I did. The first thing I did was write each of the ten members on the board of directors. But rather than just talk about the problem, I asked them to go on a tour with me so that I could show how extensive the destruction was. Some did, and dialogue started.

The board members acknowledged that it was a problem but there was no money in the budget this year to do anything about it. The next thing I did was post a letter on a web based forum in the community focusing on the presence of the Painted Bunting. Again I invited all residents for a tour and a bunting spotting. This was causing more buzz. The kicker in the letter was a statement that I put in which was: "Only poor neighborhoods leave Brazilian Pepper in place because they don't know any better!"

Now ask yourself how annoyed I must have been to put that statement in writing. Yes, I was that annoyed! In this letter, I asked for a partnership of all neighborhoods and businesses to come to a planning meeting. That seemed to hit a real nerve in this community. I enlisted the help of four other birdwatchers to do what I call a "wisdom check" to keep me from missing steps. My new team of birders made a Powerpoint presentation on pepper, presented at one of our nature programs, posted a photo of a bunting on the email based community forum, and posted a photo in the Post Office. Everybody was talking about this bird! I'm laughing, because folks still think we only have one! Trust me, we have more than one!

As the community came on board, we were able to have our first work day with 62 owners busting pepper in 19 neighborhoods, and everybody got breakfast and lunch served by our Nature Committee and one of our businesses. For more publicity I contacted the newspapers. One actually came out to cover the event. They allowed 30 minutes, and stayed for more than 2 hours hiking through conservation areas. They were in shock when they saw the average age of our workers was way over 65. So the angle was "seniors in action", community unification, and invasive species control. A very good "feel good" story.

We've been at this for about 3 months at this point in time. Four of the 19 condos have actually removed all pepper. The rest are still working. I know that we will never be "done", but the difference is already startling. Where we thought we had nothing but pepper, is now full of native plants. They were there already, but very close to being completely snuffed out. You know, each of us has a point that we can be pushed to, and then no farther. I saw myself whining and complaining that we didn't have any Painted Buntings any more... and then I looked in the mirror and asked who's fault that was? If I had failed to act, it would have been my fault!

So, when you've reached your "time for action", and you can't be pushed anymore, organize your friends, and start pushing back! I could never, ever have gotten this far without the input of this army. Don't be afraid to ask for help and advice... folks will step up to the plate. Oh, and by the way, more than 200 people now have a life bird--without ever knowing what a "life bird" was. Is that cool or what?