In the ongoing battle over East Potomac Park, a new group of activists are taking flight.
Local birders are protesting President Donald Trump’s plan to replace East Potomac Golf Links with a new luxury golf course that stretches to the edge of the waterfront. According to a rendering posted by Trump, the course would eliminate the public road around the park, as well as Hains Point, a popular recreation area and birdwatching spot.
Perhaps taking inspiration from the black-capped chickadee, birders are gathering in flocks and alerting others to the danger. DC Bird Alliance is hosting walks around Hains Point though the end of October to raise awareness about the issue. The Alliance is also publishing an art book, Hold the Point, with sketches and photographs of the local animal life. Proceeds will go to the DC Preservation League, the environmental group fighting the White House in court.
Washingtonian attended the Tuesday walk led by Alliance president Maria-Elena Montero. The removal of Hains Point “would be disastrous,” said Montero, who visited the area often while growing up in Takoma Park. “It was bumper-to-bumper picnics and family reunions all over the place,” she said. “We would go down there just to be with all the people. You could invent your own family reunion just by being down there.”
Hains Point has remained a pillar of her birding life, a public area full of warblers, jays, and natural serenity. “I still go there and can sit for hours at the horn by the water,” Montero said. “Even if I don’t even record one bird, it’s a beautiful place to be.”
The 13 people who turned up for the walk were a varied bunch. First-time birders were handed spare binoculars, while savvy veterans arrived with impressive camera equipment. Jeremy Castle, a chair of the Maryland Ornithological Society, trained his tripod binoculars on a red-bellied woodpecker. “It’s personally where I saw my 200th species, when a trio of short-eared owls hung out there a couple of years ago,” he said of Hains Point. “That was a fabulous thing to see.”
Castle started birding after Trump was first elected president. “The political situation made me want to do some sort of mediation that took me out of myself,” he said. Now mostly retired, he spends much of his free time in his job at the ornithological society, where he oversees ten Maryland sanctuaries spanning 3,000 acres.
Montero and Castle shared tidbits of knowledge with the group, giving mini-lectures on everything from merlins to red-shouldered hawks to Carolina wrens. Hains Point’s ecology and position among a migratory corridor makes it a popular stopping point for avian life. “It’s very attractive to someone who has just flown thousands of miles on their way to someplace else,” Montero said. The park’s position at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers draw in terns, Canada geese, red-breasted mergansers, and other birds “you have zero chance of seeing anywhere else in DC,” Castle said. An ultra-rare barnacle goose at Hains Point sent birders “into a frenzy” back in 2020, while a snowy owl, more commonly found in the Arctic, also made an appearance a few years back.
According to the birdwatching database eBird, 271 distinct avian species have been spotted at Hains Point. That’s the highest level of variation in DC, 15 species ahead of second-place Kenilworth Park. But the expanded golf course would lead to a reduction of habitat for the birds.
It was the first time at Hains Point for Soma Roy, a student from College Park with a colorful sweater and a plastic dragonfly pinned to her hat in an attempt to keep flies away. (“It doesn’t work,” Roy noted. “It just looks cute.”) Roy began birding in February, after previously keeping a pigeon named Gobu as a pet. She expressed concern for the future of the area she had just walked through. “I don’t know if anyone’s listening,” she said.
Occasionally a cyclist or runner would pass by, and in these uncertain times there appeared to be increased solidarity among the hobbyists. “Hooray for bird nerds!” one jogger yelled. Later, a semi-truck carrying a front-end loader trundled down the road; and the group of birders moved into the bike lane to let it pass. The truck’s front and back license plates were both covered, in violation of DC law. One or two people booed before Montero softly hushed the crowd.
Cynthia Johnson, a former triathlon runner, recalled past summers spent biking around Hains Point and swimming in the now-shuttered municipal pool. “There’s so many things that are upsetting about this administration, but this feels very, very personal to me, because it’s a place where I’ve spent a lot of time,” she said. “The administration aggressively rolls over all norms, all rules.” Now retired, Johnson plans to return to the park on Saturday, when the Washington Area Bicycle Association is holding a protest. “I’m hopeful, but you have to be active,” she said.
Hains Point will be forever changed if Trump gets his way. The National Park Service has already taken down over 400 trees on the existing golf course. After the plaintiffs cried foul, District Judge Ana C. Reyes blocked the government from removing any more trees until she can reach a verdict; Trump has already announced he will appeal the ruling.
Trump has claimed in various social media tirades that the existing golf course will close November 15 and that work on the new course is already underway. But government officials maintain that they have not committed to building a new course at all. Reyes noted the contradiction in her ruling: “Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting president,” she wrote in a Monday statement. “And yet, here we are.”
Damage has already been done, of course—those 400 felled trees aren’t coming back anytime soon. Castle expressed a worry that Trump might kick-start development on the new golf course if Republicans lose the midterms, a fear also expressed by Chris Wathan, a DC native out birding for the first time. “I just think the administration’s going to shoot, then aim,” he said.
But all the legal back-and-forth appears to be beneficial to the birders. Perhaps a new Congress will somehow stop Trump, or Reyes will at least delay the renovation until Trump exits office.
“The judge seems annoyed in our favor,” Montero said. “Nature always wins, I believe, and as long as we continue to speak on nature’s behalf, it’ll be something that will have to be contended with.”
