THE NEW YORK TIMES: Angry Birders
Noah Strycker was in a hotel room in Ethiopia when he saw news that Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge had been occupied by an armed group protesting the federal government’s imprisonment of two local ranchers. He had just completed a record-breaking “Big Year” of birding, in which he often spent 18 hours a day, without taking a day off, observing some 6,042 species of birds in 41 countries on seven continents. Mr. Strycker’s obsessive pursuit had taken him to the ends of the earth, but news of the occupation brought Malheur to mind as the place where he first fell in love with birding.
