DATE: Sunday, November 9, 1997              TAG: 9711090060

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Paul South 

DATELINE: NAGS HEAD                         LENGTH:   73 lines

BIRDWATCHER'S HIGH-FLYING ZEAL IS KNOWN FAR AND WIDE

As a 7-year-old growing up in New Jersey, Pete Dunne began his birding life for the same reason some kids play baseball, skip rope or plunge into the pages of ``Treasure Island.''

``I did it to get away from adults,'' says Dunne, who is now 47. ``Still do. There was no teacher telling me what to do, no adult telling me what my room should look like. Beauty and nature and the environment were my playground. My whole life is a treasure hunt.''

Dunne's quest to put his peepers on nature's feathered fliers has made him something of a late-20th-century legend in birding circles. In fact, some say he put Cape May, N.J. - a seaside town where up to 80,000 birds fill the skies each year - on the birding map.

``That's an overstatement,'' Dunne says, a pair of binoculars slung over his shoulder. ``I happened to be the person who became the local guru when birding was burgeoning. It was less my skill and more serendipity.''

Dunne's adventure has carried him across the country and around the world as a principal spokesman for birding. But he quickly eschews the notion that he is an evangelist seeking converts to the birding world.

``I do it with an ulterior motive,'' he says. ``I don't want everybody to think like I do. I do it so that people will become aware and conserve the resource. If people become captivated by birding, then they have a stake in the environment. It's because of that stake that they'll become protective of it.''

Unlike some in the ecological community, Dunne, who is also an avid hunter, says hunting and fishing are avenues to gaining a stake in conservation.

``I don't see hunters and environmentalists as estranged groups,'' Dunne says. ``They've just been made estranged groups by some people. I don't know how or when that happened. But I don't have any inner conflict about it.''

Dunne is no stranger to the Outer Banks, coming to Hatteras Island for birding as far back as 1974 in a battered but faithful Volkswagen Bug.

``I made 11 trips to Hatteras between December 1974 and September 1975. Something about that place was comforting,'' he said. ``There was something about the place that was as fundamental as this layer of birds over the island. There was something about the smell of the ocean, the feel of the wind, the tone of the surf and the texture of the sand and the openness of space. I walked out of my room and knew I was in the right place.''

Dunne, father of the World Series of Birding, a 24-hour competition that raises money for conservation efforts, says preserving the planet's ``right places'' requires an eye to the future.

``Get a master plan,'' he advises local leaders who wrestle daily with the quandary of economic growth vs. environmental protection. ``A master plan makes your job easy. You can fight your battles one at a time, or fall back on a plan that gives you ammunition to say yes or no. Trying to get people to work together in that mindset is tough, especially in a culture like ours that values freedom and initiative. We have to protect the playing field. But a plan shouldn't be something that's rammed down people's throats.''

In the new millennium, Dunne says, open space will be more precious than silver and gold. He tells a story of a recent September morning, his 47th birthday.

``My happiest mornings are those where I can drive to work with no cars in front of me,'' Dunne says. ``To do that, I have to get up at 4 in the morning. But I was laying awake in bed at 3 in the morning, thinking of the things I had to do. I decided to head on to work. There was a full moon, and no traffic on the road. I drove all the way with my headlights off, with only the moon to light the way. That was precious to me. But we shouldn't just prize open space. Protect it. It's not malice that's going to rob us of that prize; it's unmindfulness.''

Dunne, director of the Cape May Bird Observatory, was here for the Wings Over Water wildlife festival. For 20 weekends a year, including this one, Dunne meets with other birders - turtlenecked, sweater-vested and red-faced observers from North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia. And everywhere he goes, it seems, are his binoculars, trusty and black against his side.

``Binoculars make the world bigger,'' he says.

And folks like Pete Dunne make the world - our playing field - a bit safer.

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