SEQUIM — Bob Boekelheide has resigned as director of the Dungeness River Audubon Center, effective at year’s end.
Boekelheide, 59, who has served as the leader of the center at Railroad Bridge Park, 2151 Hendrickson Road, since it first opened in late 2001, said he will make frequent returns as an educator and bird expert.
A former wildlife biologist and high school science teacher in Port Angeles and Sequim, Boekelheide said he wants time to write a book or two and possibly get into ecotourism that involves bird-watching trips.
He also wants to do some traveling and take care of his 85-year-old father in Los Angeles.
“This has just been a joy to be involved with the river center,” Boekelheide said as he stood inside the facility full of specimens of taxidermied mammals and birds known to live in and around the Dungeness Valley and Olympic Mountains.
“I guess having a job where you can be involved with nature and people is why it has been like that,” he said.
River center board member Julie Jackson, who handles the center’s publicity, said whether Boekelheide’s position is refilled is yet for the board to consider.
“We haven’t decided in what direction to go,” Jackson said.
She said it will be a topic of discussion at the board’s annual retreat in October, where the board looks at planning the next two to three years.
Boekelheide, known for his good nature and uncanny skill at imitating the bird calls he hears in the woods, will remain living near Dungeness Bay where he and his wife, Barbara, a yoga instructor, raised their two sons, Eric and Isaac, who are both attending college.
As a wildlife biologist, he co-authored with David G. Ainly the book Seabirds of the Farallon Islands, published in 1990.
The Farallons, off the coast of San Francisco, contain the largest seabird colony in the U.S. outside of Alaska and Hawaii.
Boekelheide is passionate about wildlife, smiling as he showed a Peninsula Daily News journalist a larger-than-normal run of pink salmon spawning under the popular Railroad Bridge, a former rail span across the Dungeness River converted to a pedestrian walkway in 1992.
The bridge later became part of the popular Olympic Discovery Trail.
The bridge, equipped with an automated counter, recorded 126,277 crossings in 2010, and Boekelheide said that probably doesn’t count people walking side by side and speeding bicyclists.
Boekelheide encourages walkers and cyclists in the river center’s parking lot to become members of the center for $25 a year.
He reminds them the center is a modest nonprofit organization that depends on memberships, donations and grants.
He and the center’s two-person staff, 60 regular volunteers and about 60 other backup volunteers for festivals and special events are responsible for the upkeep of the park and center.
The Jamestown S’Klallam tribe owns the land the 25-acre riverfront park and center sits upon.
Besides the tribe, which helps clear fallen trees and restore the park following floods, the center has two other partners, Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society and Audubon Washington.
The center needs funding, with harsh economic times recently killing a $60,000 grant expected from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, one that followed a $70,000 grant the center receive more than two years ago.
Boekelheide said less funding could mean shrinking the center’s staff to two, but he emphatically said that Railroad Bridge Park “is going to be here forever,” calling it the best access to the Dungeness River.
The center sees between 6,000 to 6,500 visitors annually.
Looking back, Boekelheide cites the center’s large number of specimens as its biggest “claim to fame.”
He credits the late Claude Ritze for contributing to the collection of taxidermied wild animals, birds and waterfowl that line the walls and glass cases.
He also praises former Sequim resident and taxidermist Mark Hansen for his many contributions.
“All the birds in here, they hit windows, got hit by cars or were found dead on beaches,” Boekelheide said.
Others — birds that did not survive injuries — came from the Northwest Raptor & Wildlife Center in Sequim, which rehabilitates wildlife that has been hurt.
“Every animal in here has a story,” Boekelheide said.
He also said the establishment of a wildlife reference library of donated books in a corner of the center was another major accomplishment, as were the late artist Tim Quinn’s colorful Olympic Peninsula wildlife murals that Quinn painted night and day from January to March 2002.
“It was a good gig for him because muralists don’t get much work outdoors in January,” said Boekelheide, who in January 2010 spoke fondly of Quinn at his memorial service, standing under the detailed work that mainly dominates the center’s east wall.
Boekelheide is especially proud of the part of his job he loves the most: his Wednesday morning bird walks, which today average 15-20 people and he marks his 10th year doing it, 520 bird-watching and identifying walks later.
“There was only one time I was alone, and that was the first bird walk,” he said, adding that things got better as word got out.
He guesses between 7,000 to 8,000 participants have walked the river to see birds during that time, with some of them being repeaters.
“In the summer, it is about half locals and half tourists,” he said. “Now if I can only get them to become members . . .”
Boekelheide said he has pushed to keep the park a clean place and one of solitude by the river. He said he has worked hard to reach out to public schools.
School classes and other children’s groups on field trips to the park totaled 86 in 2010 for 1,739 students.
Classroom visits by river center staff and volunteers totaled 89 in 2010, given to 2,197 students and 113 school staffers.
Adults are also educated by center staff.
The center in 2010 put on 15 classes and 53 sessions for adults, programs ranging from the Winter Birds of the North Olympic Peninsula, Birding by Ear, Ecology of the Dungeness River and the Owl Prowl.
All this on Boekelheide’s watch.
The 12th Dungeness River Festival is less than a week away, Friday and Saturday, and Boekelheide is elated that a huge salmon run will accompany the event.
“We’re in a great business here,” he said with a smile. “People love the park.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
