Introducing New Refuge Manager Keith Ramos

This past summer, Keith Ramos joined the Northern Maine National Wildlife Refuge Complex as its new Refuge Manager. This Refuge Complex includes Moosehorn, Aroostook, and Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuges. To help you get acquainted with him, I asked Keith to answer a few questions about his past and share his hopes for the future of the Refuge Complex. Here is what he had to say…

How did you become interested in pursuing a career in environmental conservation?
I grew up in Puerto Rico and my parents are not outdoors people, but I remember watching the show “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” in Spanish on the Telemundo TV station. It came on Saturday mornings and I loved seeing the wildlife. Growing up we would visit my family in Connecticut and it was always so exciting to see white-tailed deer and go fishing with my uncle. When I started college, I thought I would become a pediatrician but that changed after my freshman year. I went to visit my parents in Swaziland, Southern Africa for the summer, while my dad was stationed there for the Coca-Cola Company. My dad took us to see Kruger National Park and that’s where I learned, after seeing the park rangers, that people could actually get paid to work with wildlife. I returned to UMass that following semester and found out that they had a Wildlife Conservation degree. I changed career paths right away, much to my dad’s dismay, but I’m very grateful to have made that decision and my dad now knows how much I love it.

What other types of work have you done with the US Fish and Wildlife Service?
I have been truly blessed throughout my 17 years with the Service. I have been able to work in four different regions and have seen some incredible places. I have spawned Atlantic salmon in freezing raceways to support Connecticut River restoration and have climbed to the top of the canopy at El Yunque rainforest to survey for Puerto Rican parrots. I got to fly over western Alaska surveying for musk oxen.

There were countless hours spent searching for nesting Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles on the Texas coast.

I have rescued manatees in the Florida springs and tracked ocelots through the south Texas brush.

I have stood under a flock of thousands of ducks and geese while trying to count their wings to divide them by two (haha), and have worked with some of the most caring and dedicated people in the World. I have the best job in the World!

How is Northern Maine National Wildlife Refuge Complex different from other refuges you’ve worked on?
This is my first opportunity to work in New England since my college days and I love it. I have spent most of my career working in flat coastal refuges, with the exception of my time in interior Alaska. Northern Maine has some incredible forests and it sure is nice to work in a refuge with some contour to the land that is accessible by roads. The three refuges within this complex have a lot of similarities and at the same time they provide very different challenges. We are protecting habitat for migratory birds, just like in some of my previous refuges, but the forest and management practices are very different. It is a good thing for me that I have an excellent staff with a lot of experience that I can depend on to help me make the right decisions.

What are your hopes for the future of the Northern Maine National Wildlife Refuge Complex?
My biggest priority as the new manager for this Complex is to guide our staff in the completion of the Comprehensive Conservation Plan (CCP) for the Moosehorn NWR, which has been in the works for several years. There are various exciting projects going on in our three refuges, but the CCP for Moosehorn is the number one priority. We are doing important work with aquatic connectivity projects within and outside our boundaries, which is reopening habitat and providing for fish passage to millions of anadromous fish. These projects have brought together multiple partners, including our local tribe, and are helping us to support the Service’s priorities.

How do you spend time enjoying the outdoors with your family?
As a family we love spending time outdoors, especially hiking, hunting, fishing and doing wildlife photography. My wife home schools our two older boys and she takes them out on the refuge trails often. Not having grown up doing a lot of outdoor activities with my parents, it has been a top priority for me to make sure that my boys do and that they grow to love the nature around us. My wife grew up in Zambia and did a lot of camping, hunting and fishing with her parents, so I’ve been learning from her as well. There is so much to learn and explore and I want to pass that love on to my children. The only way they will love nature is to be out in it, exploring it, and learning about it. It’s awesome that my job and family life can join together in so many ways.

 

My father’s military service: Anything but uneventful

Darrell’s father, a World War II veteran, in Italy on May 23, 1944. Image courtesy of Darrell.

Darrell (left) with his family. Photo courtesy of Darrell.

Today, Darrell Weldon, a military veteran and an IT specialist for our Northeast Region, shares an incredible story of his service, his father’s service in World War II, and the treasured letters that have helped him know his father.

My military career was rather uneventful. But it has a cool connection to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Aroostook National Wildlife Refuge in northern Maine is one of the places I was stationed when it was part of Loring Air Force Base. I used to work in the Weapons Storage Area. When I see photos of the refuge, such as of the bunkers converted to bat hibernacula in 2012, it brings back a lot of memories. I’ve been in many of those bunkers. Because of the remoteness, we had many close encounters with moose and black bear.

A photo from Aroostook National Wildlife Refuge in northern Maine, where Darrell was stationed. Credit: Sharon Wallace

Now, my father’s military service was anything but uneventful. My father entered the Army in 1942. In April of 1943 he landed in North Africa. His journey took him to Sicily, Italy, France and then Germany. Coming home in 1945, he did OK for a while. But, as it does with many other combat veterans, the war tormented him and made life an everyday challenge. He was only 61 when he died. December 16 will mark the 30th anniversary of his passing.

I really wanted to know what my father was like before the war changed him. He and my mother were engaged when he left for North Africa. He wrote to her as many times as he possibly could and she would receive his letters as V-Mails (Victory Mail; see below image). Before my mother passed, she gave me all his letters and some photos. These have helped me to know my father in a way that wasn’t possible while he was alive. He wrote with so much passion, expressing his love for my Mom and just longing for the war to end.

An example of Victory Mail/V-Mail from 1943. Letters that soldiers sent from war zones were censored, copied to film and printed back to paper in the U.S. This one from Darrell’s father was written from the troop transport that took him from the states to North Africa. He refers to the “Armory”; my mother went to work at the Springfield Armory to support the war effort at home. The armory is now a National Historic Site. Image courtesy of Darrell.

Here is an excerpt from V-Mail he sent her on July 10, 1943, from somewhere in North Africa. The Allied Forces have been victorious in North Africa and are about to commence operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily:

“Earlier in the evening while on the way down to church and confession I passed through a small park that at one time must have been a favorite rendezvous of those young in love. Today this place has lost much of its former beauty and many of its numerous trees are little more than stumps. What were once benches are now but scrap wood. A beautiful statue is now beyond recognition and a huge slab of marble is the only remains of what used to be.

My thoughts recalled our yesterdays and “our park” with its little stream in constant motion and its quaint wooden bridge and I whispered a prayer of thanksgiving that this was not my country, our world. It is during moments such as these that I am grateful that I am away from home rather than near standing amid our precious memories subject to this same devastation and ruin. Here I have still the right to dream and trust that when I return all those things I love and cherish so much will still exist and there will be no heart breaking sights such as these to lessen the wonderful joy of that glorious homecoming.”

Darrell’s father in front of a Signal Corps jeep in World War II. Image courtesy of Darrell.

This letter is one of my favorites because I see my father stopping to reflect on all the destruction that has already taken place and wanting none of it to ever reach our country. And at this point, D-Day, one of the most known events of WWII, is still almost a year away. The war in the Mediterranean Theater was still in its infancy with some of the harshest conditions and bloodiest battles soon to be fought in the invasions of Sicily and Italy.

Thousands of soldiers and sailors would never see home again. My father was one of the “lucky” ones to return home. I can only imagine what he encountered along this cross-Europe trek that forever changed him. I have every respect for the men and women of his time who knew that this war had to be fought and won to preserve the freedoms we enjoy today. Tom Brokaw had it right when he called them “The Greatest Generation.”

V-mail from North Africa in June 1943, addressed to Darrell’s mother. Image courtesy of Darrell.

The front of Darrell’s father’s World War II medal. Image courtesy of Darrell.

Darrell’s father’s Signal Corps pine from World War II. Photo courtesy of Darrell.

The back of Darrell’s father’s World War II medal. Image courtesy of Darrell.

Whenever I see one of these veterans still proudly wearing a cap or other article denoting their WWII service, I try to make it point to go up to them and express thanks. Over 16 million served during the war; today there are just over 1 million still alive and we lose over 500 a day.

A photo of Darrell (top right), who coaches girls’ softball, with players and others at the Austin-Gaughan Field, which is named for two soldiers who lost their lives in the Vietnam War. He led a volunteer effort on Earth Day a few years ago to fix the field, redo the parking area and paint the bleachers and players’ benches. Image courtesy of Darrell.