Our History

Charter Sanctuary

In her book, For the Love of Birds, Kay Charter chronicles the journey of her and her husband, Jimmy, leading up to their purchase of 47 acres of property for the sole purpose of helping to protect birds, especially migratory and nesting songbirds.

After selling their home in San Diego to tour North America, their travel crisscrossing the continent over the years became more and more about finding new birds for their "life" lists. Eventually, though, they settled down in Jimmy's hometown of Northport, Michigan, first buying a Victorian home and turning it into a B&B. Then, three years later, building what they thought would be their "forever" home on a half-acre lot on Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay.

It was here, at their lakeside home, that the joy of finding and observing birds developed into the passion to protect them. From their beach house windows, Kay witnessed the migratory magic of a “warbler fall out" one spring and later, another year, the rare sight of a family of fledgling winter wrens being coaxed from their nest for the first time. Together, these experiences were transformational.

Kay could no longer ignore the fact that northern Michigan was falling more and more into the hands of development, only to then be stripped of bird habitat and "manicured." While incredibly sad, it was this same realization that sparked determination to take action, which the Charters did together. The Charters had already realized that many of their favorite bird species were in decline. Migrating species like Baltimore Orioles, Scarlet Tanagers, Indigo Buntings, and a variety of precious warblers were losing ground every year. They decided to dedicate their lives to helping their beautiful feathered friends.

In February 1993, Kay and Jimmy sold their "forever" lakeside home that had skyrocketed in value. They then went about searching for a larger tract of land for their imagined sanctuary for birds in Leelanau County. They finally found what they were seeking: 47 intact acres of land for sale that had diverse bird habitat in nearby Omena. Kay thought they could not justify buying the entire 47 acres, for that would entail not only all the proceeds from the sale of their lakeside home but also part of their retirement nest egg. When she shared this view with Jimmy, he pretty easily convinced her otherwise: "I think you will be sorry if we don't buy all of it." "All of it" soon became Charter Sanctuary.

The bird sanctuary includes a quarter mile of creek running through a wetland filled with cattails, willows and dogwoods, a mixed hardwood/conifer forest that grows up the hill on the east side of the wetland, and a narrow belt of aspen woods that lines the southern edge of the property. The Charters worked hard to enhance the existing native plant-based ecosystems on the sanctuary, desiring to provide healthy habitat for migratory, nesting, and resident birds long into the future. Charter Sanctuary has hosted more than sixty nesting bird species and provides habitat for an additional hundred that fairly predictably forage for food during spring and fall migration.

The Charters also took an aggressive approach to the less desirable land by converting it to tall grassland prairie, hoping to help endangered birds requiring such habitat for nesting, like the Bobolink. Later, an image of a Bobolink would serve as the first logo for the nonprofit organization they later co-founded with others, in 2001. Through several conservation easements over time, Charter Sanctuary became "forever" protected. While the Charters retained title to their land, transfer of ownership of any part of it would include the Leelanau Conservancy and/or the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service easement protections they had put into place.

In her 2000 book, Kay wrote: "In spite of our setbacks, we wouldn't trade places with anyone. The rewards and challenges of acting as stewards for the birds on this land, which we call Charter Sanctuary, have exceeded our greatest hopes and our highest expectations." Also, about herself, Kay wrote: “My determination to help the birds goes beyond a desire to do something positive with my life. It is something I must do. It is like a calling, without it my soul would wither just as surely as my body would without food. The place we now share with these remarkable beings, these 47 acres, has provided my life with a meaning it previously lacked. It has been a blessing beyond measure."

"Kay and Jim are those rare people that live their beliefs and changed their lives to come into conformity with the things that most matter to them."
— Brian Price
Executive Director of Leelanau Conservancy (retired 2014)

Saving Birds Thru Habitat

In 2001, about eight years after purchasing their sanctuary for birds, Kay and Jim Charter, along with Marlin Bussey, Bobbie Poor and Anne Stanton, co-founded Saving Birds Thru Habitat (SBTH). The non-profit organization was created to share practical knowledge about the challenges facing birds and pollinators, and to help people understand how restoring habitat could make a real difference in their reproductive success and survival.

It was Bobbie Poor, a long-time educator and friend, who suggested to Kay that they form an organization that would support her efforts to teach others about birds and the threats to their survival. Kay had been taking people on guided bird tours of Charter Sanctuary, making presentations to various conservation and bird groups, and giving free lessons about birds (sometimes in the confines of the Charter's pole barn). Kay also talked about birds on the radio, wrote articles about birds for magazines, and had a regular column, On the Wing, published in a local newspaper, the Traverse City Record-Eagle.

After seven years as the first Board President for SBTH, Marlin Bussey (Jimmy's friend since childhood) shared these reflections in the July 2008 volume of Habitat Happenings, the organization's newsletter: "With my tenure as President coming to a close, I look back with enormous pride on how far we have come. Sitting around Jim and Kay Charter's kitchen table in the spring of 2001, a small group of excited individuals exchanged visions and proposals to create an organization that would strive to help our wild birds. The driving force, of course, is our Executive Director, Kay Charter, whose knowledge and passion for this mission is legendary."

In Kay's words, the vision for the organization was refined: "to help stem the decline of our migratory songbird populations by teaching people of all ages how to protect, enhance and restore habitat for North American birds." The organization continues to be dedicated to the cause of educating others about the challenges facing birds and protecting, enhancing, and restoring their habitats.

Over the years, as Executive Director, Kay developed and presented a wide range of educational programs, like A Tale of Two Cities — How to Save Birds With Habitat, Grow a Bird Feeder, Batty About Bats, and Bees, Butterflies, and Other Pollinators. Through Kay's various presentations, outreach efforts, and forging of partnerships, many people and organizations were first introduced to the idea that restoring habitat at home and in local landscapes could benefit birds and other wildlife.

Soon after the organization's founding, in 2001, the Charters deeded 2.50 acres of their land to create a "home" for the new organization. They later deeded an additional 1/2 acre to create an educational Monarch Way Station, expanding the organization's grounds to a total of three acres by April 2003, land that remains under conservation easement with Leelanau Conservancy.

Later that year, general contractor Jim May (from Salisbury and May Construction Company) donated his efforts to lead a crew in erecting a building all in one day, in old-style barn-raising fashion, until its framing and exterior wall sheathing was done. After that, Jim Charter and long-time friend, Ralph Kalchick, headed up an army of volunteers from the local community and friends from around the country to work on the building (roofing, electrical wiring, plumbing, installation of doors and windows, and such). That building was then dedicated to the cause of bird conservation and ecology, named the Habitat Discovery Center, during a gala ceremony in September of 2003, drawing over 300 attendees. Many volunteers (most over the age of 60, as were Kay and Jim) also dug in that year to plant native trees, shrubs, forbs, and other native plants on the surrounding grounds. One of those volunteers, Janet Dickerson, remembers to this day, over 20 years later, the exact spot she planted a Prairie Dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum); she can point it out before the plant emerges from dormancy in the spring.

After the founding of SBTH and the erection of the Habitat Discovery Center, the pace of activity that centered on helping birds intensified even more for the Charters. Kay continued to make presentations locally and across the country, write and distribute educational materials, and form new partnerships, all with the aim of educating people of all ages about birds so they would better appreciate birds and take action to help save them. Ideally, some people would then become serious bird conservationists.

The resource of the nature center served the organization well as it provided a concentrated space (inside and outside) for people to come for both educational and social events. Highly respected and nationally acclaimed people were brought in as presenters, events that attracted new people to the organization.

For more than two decades, Jimmy played his welcomed role as groundskeeper by planting natives and keeping invasive plants at bay, first on Charter Sanctuary and later, with a dedicated focus, on the deeded land of the organization's nature center. Jimmy also mowed and maintained a grassy pathway from the Charter's home to the Habitat Discovery Center, linking them through Charter Sanctuary. This pathway aided guided bird, pollinator, and native plant tours and other activities, including tracking down and removing especially troublesome invasive plants, like autumn olive. Jimmy spent most days, weather permitting, locating and removing invasive plants. He could often be found walking the nature center's pathways looking for and trying to eradicate non-native plants that did not belong there.

Jimmy cared for the gardens for as long as he was able. Sadly, James Charter passed away on Easter Sunday in 2017. A large number of people later gathered at an event to celebrate his life at the nature center. Without Jimmy, Charter Sanctuary and Saving Birds Thru Habitat would not have been founded or exist today.

The organization has benefited from a sequence of energetic and dedicated Board Presidents, who handed off the baton of leadership smoothly from one birder to the next: Marlin Bussey (2001-2008), Gina Erb (2008-2014), Linda Ketterer (2014-2018), Bert Thomas 2018-2021, and Dave Barrons (2021-2023). The organization also seemed to have a revolving door that drew in caring people who dedicated their talents and time, including other officers and directors serving on the board, various advisors, contributors to its newsletter, event presenters, guided trip leaders, and volunteers of all sorts, including many artists and photographers.

Same as birds who move freely across borders (neighborhood, county, state, national, and international), Kay believed the organization should reach as far as it could, across age, class, organizational, professional, and political divides, as well as geographic borders, to draw together as many people as possible in support of the vision to reverse the heartbreaking decline of birds. This strongly held belief propelled Kay and the organization forward in accomplishing one project after another, locally and across the country. Accomplishments, as documented in the organization's newsletter for over more than two decades, makes for a very long list indeed.

Highlights of Kay's accomplishments include:

• Working with Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy on prairie restoration at Acadia Dunes Grassland;
• Helping a West Texas rancher initiate the Balmorhea Texas Bird Fest and inspiring the restoration of a wetland for wintering birds in Texas;
• With conservationist Doug Traux, establishing Nature North, a cooperative effort involving 28 conservation organizations to offer a free educational convention for children 5 years in a row;
• Serving on Fairmont Mineral's Sustainable Development team for 7 years to make native bird habitat restoration recommendations for mining sites in 7 states (resulting in a Certificate of Exceptional Merit from the National Wildlife Federation and a Corporation of the Year award from Michigan Audubon for Fairmount);
• Helping put together the Beaver Island Birding Trail and annual birding festival that inspired locals to save a large boreal forest on the Island;
• Establishing a young birder's mentoring project with SBTH Board Director, Dave Watkins, that lasted several years, with a rotation of elementary students from Detroit-based Ronald Brown Academy each year, who were taken on sponsored field trips during bird migration;
• Founding the Leelanau Peninsula Bird Fest with Dave Barrons (who later served as SBTH President), that ran for 5 years and later resurrected in 2022 and 2023 as the Leelanau Bird Fest;
• In partnership with several other organizations, establishing the Sleeping Bear Birding Trail;
• With American Bird Conservancy, meeting with Congressional leaders in Washington to lobby for birds in 2019 and 2023; and
• Receiving a $150,000 grant to provide and organize bird conservation educational efforts in California over a 3-year period (2022-2024).

"What propelled Saving Birds Thru Habitat to the short pile of the French Foundation's favorite grantees was the lessons it teaches. Not that the actual on-the-ground habitat work isn't impressive and important, but showing the public the value of that work magnifies the contribution a thousand-fold. We consider Saving Birds Thru Habitat one of our very best investments for wildlife."

— Ted Williams
Conservationist, freelance writer, author, fisherman, and advocate for restoring aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems 

Recent History

Kay loved to travel by train, always with her bags packed with passion. She made her last cross-country train trip to California alone, in late summer of 2023. The main motivation for that trip was to meet up with her long-time fellow conservationist and friend, Doug Tallamy, in order to host presentations by him at the Mission Trails Regional Park in San Diego. The presentations had been planned by Saving Birds Thru Habitat in order to help fulfill the aims and requirements of a generous 3-year grant that had been awarded to the organization.

The trip was hard on Kay physically and, when she returned, she said she should no longer travel. She had already been having difficulty just getting around, including on the grounds at the nature center. The realization that she could no longer "run on all eight cylinders" was hard on Kay; she said that she might have to put her "feet up" and limit her activity to writing, maybe her autobiography.

Kay's newly formed Board of Directors, along with Kay, brainstormed on ways to relieve some of her work load and keep the organization moving forward. That would need to include completing the California Grant through its last year of funding in 2024. One of the new directors lived in California and ideas started to flow. Also at one point, Kay offered to write for the organization's newsletter, communicate with members and donors, and identify and recruit presenters for events.

However, Kay soon found that her writing, which had always been easy and rewarding, no longer flowed naturally for her. Discouraged by this, she soon determined she couldn't generate enough energy to continue in her role as Executive Director. After decades of hard work and passionate advocacy for birds, in late November 2023, at age 86, Kay announced that she was "already retired, with no responsibilities." Saving Birds Thru Habitat, Kay's "baby" as she referred to it, would have to continue without its mother, without its spark plug.

Even before Kay's retirement as Co-Founder and only Executive Director of Saving Birds Thru Habitat, the organization was in transition. The majority of board directors who were in place at the start of 2023 resigned early that year, long before Kay retired. The remaining three directors at large, who were not officers, stayed on to support Kay and the organization. During a teleconference in late September 2023, they appointed four new directors to the board, all members of the "Working Group to Save Saving Birds." Then, the entire SBTH Board of Directors, those remaining and those new, proceeded to elect the officers necessary to continue the organization. Those elected as officers were the newly appointed directors from the working group, a group put in place by Mike Berst per Kay's request to help her find people willing to serve on her board. Kay had asked a few other people to come on board to help too but, as it turned out, they were reluctant to serve due to either consuming family obligations or too long of a journey between home and Omena, where board meetings were typically held. Once the new Board of Directors was established, the directors who had remained to help resigned, wishing the new board success.

Mike Berst, who was elected President and is now Acting Director, had been asked by Kay, earlier in the summer of 2023, before she left for California, to help "save" her organization, thinking she would always be at its helm. After her return home, however, Kay's resolve to retire grew stronger over the next couple of months and, by the end of November 2023, she formally moved into retirement.

Notably, in her recruitment of Mike, Kay told him she always envisioned that the grounds surrounding the nature center would someday be "covered in native plants." She thought Mike would be able to advance the organization's conservation education and inspire people to more fully embrace the importance and beauty of native plants, given his wealth of knowledge about them. Mike had been propagating native plants for years, prioritizing working with local genotypes. He had also been planting natives at the nature center, removing invasive plants, leading native plant tours, and the like.

To make a continuing tangible impact as envisioned by Kay, and also by Jimmy, habitat enhancement and restoration efforts have focused on the grounds at the nature center. Labor-intensive activities include removing invasive species, installing an abundance of native plants, and creating pathways. This habitat work will directly benefit migratory songbirds, seasonal nesting birds, and resident bird species endemic to the region. The demonstration gardens will be a resource, across seasons, for people to learn about native plants and their crucial role in the survival of birds and their pollinator allies.

The Michigan Natural Features Inventory guides the selection of forbs, ferns, graminoids, shrubs and trees that represent a diversity of natural communities occurring in Northern Lower Michigan. Installing thousands of native plants, representing more than a hundred species, is a huge undertaking. Hard labor is required, involving digging and moving heavy materials, such as sand and gravel. It became clear toward the end of 2024, considering the aging local and seasonal members, that volunteer help on site would be insufficient. Consequently, in partnership with SEEDS, a non-profit organization, a work corps of young adults was engaged to help (at a discounted rate because of the unique native plant training opportunity provided on site). By attracting this younger "green collar" cohort through SEEDS, we are offering early to mid-career, hands-on training in native plant identification and habitat restoration to benefit birds, as well as getting more work done quicker at the Habitat Discovery Center!

Other than keeping the turf lawn and its weeds mowed, the grounds at the Habitat Discovery Center have been neglected for a long time and require healing. Habitat enhancement and restoration are essential. We anticipate the project of restoring the grounds at the nature center will help to rejuvenate Saving Birds Thru Habitat, an organization that has long been an important regional asset: a center for community involvement, inspiration, and conservation education.

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

— Aldo Leopold
American writer, philosopher, naturalist, ecologist, environmentalist, and wilderness advocate

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