Woodland Owners are Key to Improving Wildlife Habitat

The northeast region of the United States is home to some of the most densely forested lands throughout the country. With more than half of these forests owned by private landowners, residents play a vital role in conservation efforts of many threatened wildlife species and healthy wooded ecosystems. The American Forest Foundation, in partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, are working with family woodland owners to enhance and promote the region’s habitat.

Historically, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service has worked beside landowners to boost habitat with outstanding results. Below, we showcase just how much we can accomplish when we work as a team.

The Delmarva Fox Squirrel is a great example of a conservation success story by landowners. More than 80 percent of the squirrels forested habitat is privately owned. As landowners continue to support the squirrels with routine timber harvest and farming with sufficient mature forest nearby, the species continues to thrive and expand across the working landscapes of the Delmarva Peninsula.

Rick and Donna Ambrose, landowners and cottontail conservationists. (Photo credit: Kate Whitacre, USFWS)

Landowners, Rick and Donna, along with numerous foresters, farmers, birdwatchers, biologists, hunters and conservationists, have been part of a coordinated effort aimed at conserving the New England cottontail. Rick and Donna have improved and created young forest habitat on their land to benefit New England cottontail and numerous other species, including woodcock, bobcats, snowshoe hares, a broad range of songbirds, box turtles, and frosted elfin butterflies. Their tremendous efforts have helped keep the cottontail off the Endangered Species List.

This is a New England cottontail. Credit: Tom Barnes / USFWS

Additional efforts to support New England cottontail conservation are happening all throughout the Northeast! Benny Caiola is a real estate developer, but for the next several years, he’s going to be developing some of his land with a different goal in mind — restoration of the New England cottontail rabbit. Caiola, who lives in Larchmont, NY, owns 300 acres in Patterson, in Putnam County, that adjoins about 1,000 acres of state land. The land will now be managed to benefit young forest for the cottontails. This type of habitat restoration also benefits approximately 40-plus species, like turkey and deer!

Partners (loggers Joe Zarecki and Faun Koplovsky, forester Doug Ramey, Ted Kendziora with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) stand in front of our first private landowner project in New York. Photo courtesy of Benny Caiola

Working together with motivated landowners and partners is crucial to conservation success. These relationships have been instrumental in developing key projects with great benefit to the species.

Check out the blogs below to see more great stories like these!

Working Lands for Wildlife

Cooperation, Conversation, and Conservation

 

Partnerships for fish passage

As a Pathways student in the Fish Passage Engineer Program, Kevin often works in the field on mission critical projects. Photo Credit: USFWS

Kevin Mulligan is a Pathways Program student working on the Northeast Region’s fish passage engineer team. The fish passage engineering program is the result of a successful partnership between the Service, U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Massachusetts. Today, Kevin shares with us his experiences on the team.

The term “fish passage engineer” may not be the most trending subject in media these days, but for fish species that need access to habitat in order to live, a fish passage engineer can be the difference between finding  successful spawning  sites or, literally, hitting a brick wall.

I was first introduced to the Fish Passage Engineer Team through a partnership between UMass, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. At the time I was working on my graduate studies within the UMass Department of Environmental and Water Resources Engineering. The partnership is designed to give students practical on-the-job experience, and at the same time provide the agencies with academic resources for doing research and having students assist with critical work. As part of the partnership, Service employees teach classes and work with students on real, working projects.  In September 2013, I began a research project at UMass funded by the Hydro Research Foundation.  My adviser, Brett Towler, is a member of the Service’s Fish Passage Engineer Team and an adjunct professor at the university.  In May 2015, once my graduate studies were nearly completed, I joined the team as a Pathways Program intern.

The Holyoke Dam on the Connecticut River in Massachusetts is another location where fish engineers work to move fish upstream to reach spawning habitat. Photo credit: USFWS

My primary focus as part of the engineer team is to develop the region’s first ever fish passage engineering design criteria manual. Creating the manual requires integration of numerous scientific and engineering disciplines that include fish behavior, hydraulics, hydrology and hydropower. But for the fish and aquatic species I am working for, the criteria manual means survival.

Kevin visits the Howland Dam bypass in Maine as part of his Pathways experience. Photo credit: USFWS

As a Pathways Program intern some of the perks of working with the fish passage engineering team are visiting fishways throughout scenic New England, participating in technical meetings and learning from professionals actively working in the field. Thanks to my education and the partnership with the Service and USGS I feel equipped to handle these experiences and projects that I am asked to assist with. Specific courses in the fish passage specialization program that have been particularly useful in my work for the partnership are The Design of Fish Passage Facilities, Open Channel Flow, Hydrology, and the Ecology of Fish.

A banner is displayed at the Fish Passage Conference held in the Netherlands. Organizations from all over the world come together each year to share the latest science in fish passage engineering. Photo credit: USFWS

One of the projects I have been fortunate to work on was developing computational fluid dynamics and physical models to enhance the design of downstream guidance structures for fish passage. In addition, the partnership started an Annual International Fish Passage Conference, to which I have been on the organizing team for the past five years. After being held in Massachusetts at UMass in 2010, the conference took place in Oregon, Wisconsin and The Netherlands. My participation in the conference has allowed me to connect with people in the field of fish passage from all over the world.

I am honored to be part of such an amazing team of fish passage engineers and biologists northeast whose mission is to improve the life of aquatic organisms in our rivers and oceans. My time with the Service and the work through the partnership has truly been educational and personally rewarding. Undoubtedly, the additional knowledge and skills I’ve gained will be useful throughout my career.

Learn more about the Fish Passage Engineering partnership with UMass.

Learn more about fish passage.

Meet Stacey Pacheco: FIRST female Heavy Equipment Safety Instructor

Credit: Anne Post/USFWS

This post is coming from Anne Post, chief librarian duty stationed at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV and on detail with External Affairs in Hadley. She is passionate about photography and film, and loves any possible creative opportunity that presents itself. She is really good at bringing order to chaos ie. her library hat.

Shout out to Silvio O. Conte National Wildlife Refuge’s Administrative Officer Stacey Pacheco who recently received her certification as a Heavy Equipment Safety Instructor. Stacey is the FIRST female in the Service to have achieved this certification and she will go a long way to support the science in the field with her behind-the-scene’s hard-driving work and devotion!

Stacey came with a Class A commercial driver’s license and a truck driving career when she started to work as office assistant in the Northeast regional office in April 1989.

“I started off assisting Teri Nehart in the RO with the Wage Grade workshop in 1991 and three years later when it was time to start planning again, Teri was too busy so that is how I became the lead. Then when I took the job at Conte, I told Andy (French, refuge manager) in my interview that it was a must that I continue to coordinate. He agreed.” The workshops are held every three years throughout the Northeast; so while she crunched budget numbers and supported the refuge staff she got to loving the virtual “maintenance shop” experience standing up these workshops and hanging with the guys who moved earth and maintained FWS buildings and land across the nation.

Stacey started working at the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge office in 1997.

“I love the policy and procedures kind of work so I can support the guys on the ground, but also know how happy I am in the maintenance world.” Stacey looked at me and said, “So, why not do both!”

With a huge smile and a glimmer of pride, Stacey called out those who have made a difference for her. “ I am so fortunate to have the support of Andy French as I love a variety of tasks – doing budgets part of the day and then out on heavy equipment too…it’s pretty great! “ She considers both John Blitch, National Heavy Equipment Coordinator and Bill Starke, John’s counterpart in the Northeast regional office her “mentors.” They are all gearing up for a Wage Grade Workshop (Fall 2016) and Stacey will instruct as well.

Bill mentioned in observation of her attending the “Training the Trainer” workshop in Nevada: “She had no problem as the only female of the bunch and the men had no issue with it either. I think that acceptance is a positive reflection on these FWS employees and of the whole Service.”

Two years of hard core training was part of her certification which included a design and delivery course in Texas and a “Training the Trainer” workshop in Nevada. She will train or shadow a trainer twice a year to stay certified so proximity to equipment at the Refuge and a few seasonal employees as students will give her some good experience.

Stacey has taken the bulldozer by the horn and is thinking of future dreams; she would love to become the assistant to the Regional or National Heavy Equipment Coordinator and with her “metal to the pedal” she will likely achieve her goals. Congratulations on all your achievements!