History
The Lake Erie Metropark Hawk Watch as established in 1983 under the leadership of Tim Smart. Smart had counted hawks for several seasons
at Holiday Beach Conservation Area in Malden Center, Ontario, Canada. He knew that birds moving past Holiday Beach had to cross into Michigan near the Detroit region. Smart scouted the area, trying to find the best and most consistent concentration of hawks. His efforts were soon rewarded with two sites, the LEMP boat launch (the main site) and Pointe Mouille State Game Area Headquarters parking lot(a secondary site), located just south of the Metropark. Both are located just 20 miles south of Detroit in Wayne County, and just eight miles (as the hawk flies) across the Detroit River from Holiday Beach.
Smart and a handful of dedicated volunteers began counting, mainly on weekends. Even with this limited amount of coverage, Smart knew he had stumbled onto something big.This was fully realized during the fall of 1990 when the counters logged in their first full season of coverage, producing an astounding 106,235 birds.
Smart served as coordinator of the watch for 16 years. His efforts established the Lake Erie Metropark Hawk Watch as one of the premier fall hawk sites in North America, with some of the most spectacular hawk flights ever recorded. In 1998, Lake Erie Metropark Hawk Watch became Southeastern Michigan Raptor Research (SMRR) and was granted nonprofit status. Smart retired soon afterwards, handing the leadership of SMRR to veteran counter Jeff Schultz. In April of 2001, Schultz stepped down from the Presidency and became a member-at-large. Paul Cypher, an interpreter at Lake Erie Metropark, was voted in as president.
The 2001 season marked a new chapter in SMRR's efforts to monitor the hawk migration over southeast Michigan. DTE Energy demonstrated its continued environmental support by generously providing SMRR a stipend to fund a full-time hawk counter. Their generous support has continued for seven seasons, beginning in 2001. During these years of paid help, SMRR has been fortunate enough to hire two of the best counters in the business: Craig Fosdick and Calvin Brennan.
The 2007 count season saw the addition of two new co-sponsers. The International Wildlife Refuge Alliance and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service contributed funding for a counter. In addition, the USFWS granted funding to help facilitate data entry from all SMRR seasons into a national database.
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