Moving Mariah and Kaver

By now many of you will have heard that Kodak needs to make extensive repairs to the facade of the tower on which the falcons' nestbox has resided for the past eleven years. If you haven't seen the news yet, here's Kodak's press release regarding the work. After you've finished with that, read what the folks at the Rochester Falconcam have to say about it.

Now, there's no question that this news comes as a surprise to many, and an unwelcome one at that. After all, there are a lot of unknowns here. Will Mariah adapt to a nestbox in a new location? Will she try to nest on the Kodak tower despite the removal of her nestbox and the presence of any number of dozen hard-hatted workers? And if she does move successfully, will we be able to figure out which nestbox she'll use in time to re-install the cameras and keep the Rochester Falconcam site rolling with great pictures in 2009?

The truth is, nobody knows. The problem is that a few people have apparently decided that this effort is doomed to failure before it has even started. Their pronouncements, though well-meaning in the main, are founded on ignorance, and in some cases are self-serving. My fellow Rochester Falconcam team members and I have spent quite a lot of time explaining the work and the need for it over the past several days. More than that, we've expended many hours over the past eighteen months working with Kodak and the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to identify all of the possible alternatives that could be implemented in order to: 1)Maximize the safety of both the falcons and the workers, and 2)Allow the repair work to proceed in an efficient (and yes) cost-effective manner.

So it really frosts my pumpkin (thanks to my friend Dave Mura for that interesting turn of phrase) when a self-appointed blowhard decides that we're all washing our hands of the falcons for the sake of some supposed, but unarticulated, short-term or hard-hearted benefit.

The article linked above appears to have been written by an imbecile with a website. Pretty much anyone can put one up these days (yours truly included). The article, editorial, whatever-- is replete with inaccuracies. The writer gets ZERO facts correct regarding the relocation, except that it will take place. His "well-placed friend" sounds like someone with an ax to grind and no concept of the damage being caused by their leak. It is certainly not anyone who has a clue as to how much planning or care went into this decision.

Honestly, how much do you expect Kodak, in tough economic times, to inflate the cost of this work? It is already well in excess of $10 million.

Let's see... we'll keep the nest box in place and work seven months out of the year. Why, that's a great plan! Take down and re-erect the scaffolding and other equipment needed for the repairs every year? Don't forget, Kodak's paying for the equipment whether it's being used or not, for the duration of the repair project. Furlough the workers every January and bring them back in July? Sure, no problem, just shell out more millions. Kodak has deep pockets, after all. Look at how their stock price has shot into the stratosphere lately.

What's that you say, Mr. Project Manager? The work's going to take six years instead of three? Well, heck! That's alright, we'll just throw a few million more into the project budget. We'll only need to lay off a couple hundred employees to offset the cost. No big deal for a heartless corporate curmudgeon like Kodak.

GVAS apologists? DEC apparatchiks having their strings pulled by Albany bureaucrats? That's easy to write for someone with not a whit of journalistic integrity, and no interest in getting at the truth of the matter, but it also happens to be patently false.

Of course, idiots like Aaron Wicks can write whatever they want. Any jerk can put up a website, stand on his cyber-soapbox and try to impress us with fancy French phrases. He's perfectly entitled to write and publish anything he can conjure in his oblivious brain. He's also perfectly entitled to be seen for the moron that he is.

One thing he failed to mention in his witless diatribe-- Leadership is often about making difficult choices, and always about hard work. It's easy to sit on the sidelines and throw stones at those who have to weigh tough issues, and ultimately satisfy stakeholders with needs that sometimes diverge wildly. But I haven't seen Aaron Wicks, or (I'll bet) his alleged source volunteering to take on some of the real work that's needed to ensure successful nesting for these falcons; to plan the educational programs for school children; to write "eerily propagandizing" updates about what's happening in the falcons' world; to code chron jobs for processing and publishing digital images to the website, or to spend hours troubleshooting a bad camera amidst bone-numbing snowstorms in the depths of February. And I most definitely haven't seen him take time away from job and family to attend planning meetings in order to advocate for the protection and safety of the Peregrines out of nothing but love of the species and the hope that you're making a difference in the world. Nope, Aaron Wicks and his ilk are too busy writing their little screeds and their baseless accusations to actually do anything to help the falcons, or the Rochester Falconcam program to be successful.

So by all means-- go ahead and take another whack at Big Bad Kodak. Slap the faces of GVAS and the DEC one more time. Good on ya, Aaron Wicks, for putting us Smugtown elites in our places.