The Wrangell Convention and Visitor Bureau met last Friday afternoon, April 17. Among the items on the meeting's agenda was the cancellation of this year's Birdfest, and what could be done in its place. The Stikine River Birding Festival, more shortly known as Birdfest, is a Wrangell tradition that dates back over 20 years.
Usually occurring in April, around the time migratory birds return to Wrangell and the Stikine River area, the festival brings all kinds of people, from locals to tourists, to see and learn more about birds. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, this year's festival has been cancelled but the CVB wanted to discuss ideas for any replacement programs they could organize.
One idea was to keep the photo contest, a typical part of the birding festival, in place.
Corree Delabrue, with the Forest Service, also had another idea.
"The only thing I kind of thought of, actually started working on with Cindy, was doing 'Name that Tweet'," Delabrue said.
The "Name that Tweet" idea is, basically, to post a soundbite of a bird call to the Forest Service's Facebook page, and let people try to guess what kind of bird it is. The ranger district has access to about five years of recorded bird calls to choose from, Delabrue said.
Economic Development Director Carol Rushmore added that she put in a request for an extension of their Forest Service RAC money that was going to be used for Birdfest. She has not heard back yet on whether they will receive this extension, she said, and whether that meant they could reschedule Birdfest for a later date.
Other items being delayed because of COVID-19 include the ongoing Tourism Best Management Practices document. This has been a project the convention and visitor bureau has been working on since last November. The TBMP document is meant to be a collection of guidelines that different businesses in Wrangell's tourist industry could agree to. This could potentially help limit tourism's impact on the day-to-day life of the Wrangell community, and help settle disagreements between different businesses. However, with the pandemic, Rushmore said it was probably a good idea to just put the project on hold until a later date. The rest of the bureau largely agreed, deciding to use this time for information gathering and to wait until after the pandemic to start working toward decisive action.
Under new business, the bureau also discussed the development of their travel planner. The planner needs to be updated, Rushmore said, but the COVID-19 pandemic has caused many local businesses to close or change their operations for the time being. Few businesses would have the money to put new advertisements or information into the travel planner this year, Rushmore said. The bureau discussed several options for how to handle the travel planner, including putting the update on hold and moving to a fully digital travel planner this year.
Other items on the meeting's agenda included a review of a letter of support for a grant proposal by the Alaska Travel Industry Association, an update on Wrangell's online traffic from Truly360, and a discussion about the potential creation of a COVID-19 travel webpage.
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