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Harold Burgess
No full textHarold Burgess oral history as conducted by Kevin Kilcullen.
Mr. Burgess discusses the controversy over the Area Office concept, the different types of refuges, land management, changes within the Service, having a master plan and sticking to it, and how he feels refuges were focusing more on the public and public use than on the biology.
Organization: FWS
Name: Harold Burgess
Years: 1950-1980
Program: Refuges
Keywords: Employee, History, Biography, Public use/access, Wildlife refuges, work of the Service, Military, Migratory birds1
Oral History Cover Sheet
Name: Harold Burgess
Date of Interview: March 9, 1988
Interviewer: Kevin Kilcullen
Approximate years worked for Fish and Wildlife Service: 1950-1980
Offices and Field Stations Worked, Positions Held: GS-5 at Upper Mississippi River Refuge, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin; Union Slough National Wildlife Refuge, Iowa; Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge, Missouri; Lacreek National Wildlife Refuge, South Dakota; Kansas City Area Office
Colleagues and Mentors: Dick Trauger, J. Clark Salyer, Fran Gillette
Most Important Issues: Area offices, public use/access
Brief Summary of Interview: Mr. Burgess discusses how he came to work for the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the various refuges/offices he worked. He discussed the controversy over the Area Office concept, the different types of refuges, land management, changes within the Service, having a master plan and sticking to it, and how he feels refuges were focusing more on the public and public use than on the biology.
Keywords: employee, history, biography, public use/access, wildlife refuges, work of the Service, military, migratory birds
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Kevin: Start off first, give your name, you academic background, your career, a little bit, when you started with the Service and all. That would be a good starting point.
Harold: My name is Harold Burgess. I started with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1950. Prior to that, I had been a rubber tree planter in Liberia and had been in the Army three years in Korea and Japan. I had a bachelor’s degree in forestry and a master’s degree in wildlife from Michigan State College at the time of my entry.
Kevin: What kind of positions did you have? What about your career in the Service?
Harold: Yeah, I came to work for the Fish and Wildlife Service sort of accidentally. After coming back out of the Army in 1949/50, I took a semester at the University of Michigan, while for a job any place in the world actually, and noticed that there was an announcement of Civil Service Exams for refuge manager and game management positions in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I debated which of these that I should try for because the exams were taken at the same time and decided that even though the entry in the refuge system was a GS-5 and the law enforcement was GS-7, I would be able to spend more time in my home with the refuge system.
I actually entered the refuge system in 1950 and found that 75% of my work on the Upper Mississippi Refuge was law enforcement and that I would spend as much time away from home as if I were a law enforcement officer. I was on the Upper Mississippi for five years and then took a transfer to Union Slough National Wildlife Refuge in northern Iowa. There the management was quite different in that we were working at many different types of things that are a smaller scale than you would find on most conventional refuges. We had farmer permittees, we had grazing, we had many of the multiple use activities that you would find on a normal wildlife refuge. It was a great training opportunity for me to learn how to manage the larger refuges.
Fortunately, this was a time of change. When the stations were promoted and I was able to go along with the station and changed from a GS-7 to GS-11 in fairly short time and we were finally making survival wages. 3
I had transferred from Union Slough to Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge in northern Missouri in 1962, and was at Squaw Creek for 10 years. There I managed mostly wintering and migratory waterfowl. Most of our time was spent in preparing the refuge for feeding the migratory waterfowl during their north and south migrations.
I left Squaw Creek in 1972 for Lacreek National Wildlife Refuge in South Dakota. Lacreek is an oasis between in the Badlands of South Dakota and the Sand Hills of Nebraska and was producing as many as 1,000 Canada geese and 10,000 ducklings a year, but the bonus there were the trumpeter swans. This was one of the baits that the Service used to get me to transfer to Lacreek.
I have always been fascinated by trumpeter swans, and there we had a restored flock that was producing as many as 10 young a year. Since that time, I have been involved with the Trumpeter Swan Society and have been involved with trumpeter restoration. In 1978, I transferred from Lacreek to the area office in Kansas City, mainly for health reasons. I was getting older, my arthritis was catching up with me and I was finding it very difficult to work through the winter in South Dakota. I transferred southeast, to Kansas City, and spent the next two years until my retirement there.
Kevin: If you could think back to the period when you were in the refuge system. What were the two events or milestones that had the most influence on the direction of the system that were the most important?
Harold: I think our greatest opportunity came about between the Ford and the Carter administration when we were asked to analyze everything that we were doing and see what we should be doing in our refuges and how much money we would need to fund the program that we thought was adequate for meeting the potential of the refuges we were on. After the refuge manager had made their first cut, their first thinking on this, we were told we were way short of what we should be asking for and to go back and to develop more things, which we did. We were supposed to accomplish this over a ten year period.
When President Carter came into office they said that anything that the Ford Administration could do in ten years, we should do in four. So, they squeezed it all up 4
into four, and unfortunately we go way away from our goals of producing resources and got involved in building roads, building other things. We had a great opportunity there and in a lot of ways we did benefit by it, but we got, I think, our objectives were very mixed before we got through. There is something to say about this, in that when we had very little money, refuge mangers were able to use their own ingenuity and to accomplish great things. Once they got fully funded, they could no longer do that because they got a lot more attention from the higher offices and had a lot more reporting to do. We got caught up into systems that really prevented us from doing the great things we could have done if we had more time to do them, and probably less money.
That is one of the turnabouts. A lot of the refuge people were not pleased with the area office concept because we were used to going direct to the regional office with our problems and having them come direct to us. In the early days of the area office we found that we were having to go to the area office, the region office, and to Washington to get anything done. A lot of things were not done that could have been done because of the difficulty of getting through all of the different systems.
I think again, however, when they dismantled the area office it was another chaos time, in that we suddenly had to find a lot of places for people of rank. Many of those people were put in the field where they didn’t necessarily fit. Many people were forced to go places they didn’t really want to go. This was a very difficult time, as well, for the traditional field workers.
Kevin: When were the area offices created?
Harold: That would be about 1972, 1973 or 1974.
Kevin: There area offices were disbanded when?
Harold: They were disbanded in the last administration, about 8 years ago. There were some difficult times, not only for the refuges, but for other people in the field. Reorganizations are pretty difficult for field people to take.
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Kevin: From the period that you came on to work with the Service and the refuge system in the 1950’s--I don’t know how much you’ve kept up lately, I imagine you probably have--what are the major differences? What do you perceive the big differences to be in that 30 to 40 year period?
Harold: I think that you have a lot more people in the Service that are system oriented rather than resource oriented. They go by the book; they’ve written the book. A lot of times the resources come last in their thinking. There are many more people now that are interested in how every decision is going to affect them as individuals than there were in the early days. In the early days, most of us thought how these decisions are going to affect wildlife.
It think that one of the thing that is happening in many areas is that it was become necessary to give a lot more attentions to the public, to the public use of the refuge, and because of that the priorities have been given to this rather than to the biological resources of the refuge. We are, in many places, better staffed to accumulate information on public use than we are for information on wildlife use.
The questions that are asked by Congress, perhaps, and by public are more apt to be on public use than they are on wildlife resources. To answer these questions, we’ve staffed in that direction. We are now a long ways from knowing what’s going on biologically on our refuges. I would say that we are today, much further away of knowing what’s on our refuges than we were in the 1960’s.
Kevin: When you were manger and you were hiring people, what kind of qualities or traits did you look for in new employees as you hired them? Where did you get most of the employees from that you hired?
Harold: Well, in the original days I only hired summer help. I considered that if I was going to hire labor, for instance, I might as well be hiring a college student that was going to come into the field rather than some other laborer off the street. I was maybe one of the early ones to hire what we call student labor. Although we had the work cut out for 6
them to do like fencing and other maintenance work, we saw that they had a fairly rounded experienced in refuge management during their time.
In fact, some of the students that I have had actually took part in research that developed into papers that were published in the Journal of Wildlife Management. One of these people, Dave Trauger, happened to be the Director of Patuxent Wildlife Research Station. There were a number of refuges that did this and I think they were doing a great service for themselves as well as for the Fish and Wildlife Service when they hired that way.
I have had very little experience in actually hiring people for assistant positions or higher rank positions because that’s done by personnel. At least the choices and the criteria for those people are set up so that they screen them down to about three before you make a choice, so you don’t have a chance to look at the whole field.
I think this is a mistake. I think that the project leadership should be able to see the whole field and have more choices than those final ones that are selected because the criteria that are set up for those seem to have very little relationship with the job that we are hiring people to do. There was a move in the Service, particularly 15 to 20 years ago, that everybody we hired were to be a potential regional director, and the training was all set in that direction. Well, we know that everybody can’t be a regional director, nor could every regional director do the job out in the field that you want done. I think our personnel and career people went overboard in that direction.
The thing is that even if we have people trained to be regional directors and they’ve come up through the ranks, there is always the political element that will dictate that some other people are going to hold some of those jobs rather than our people.
One of the things that the Service has done is open the doors to women. I think I was probably one of the first managers to have a woman clerk. I thought then and I think now that they do a better job of clerical type of things and most of them can do just as good a job in the field as the men. For years, we hired male clerks that were really don’t very efficient clerks but mainly they could get out and band ducks and do other things well. We’ve sort of gone the correct direction now. WE don’t insist that our clerical help be able to do the field work.
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Kevin: In the late 50’s and, I guess, the early 60’s there was a big push for wetlands acquisitions and easement. How did that affect the refuge system? What did that do?
Harold: Well, I was never tied up in a refuge that had an acquisition program nor an easement system tied to it. I was in South Dakota, but I was in western South Dakota and all that state’s acquisition was done in the east. I do know that acquisition sometimes restrains you operations because you have to be much more careful that you don’t offend your neighbor who might be one of the people that you are trying to buy land from, or you might say something that raises the price of land. You’re under much more restraint, I think, in the areas where you are acquiring lands.
That’s true down here no in the Rio Grande Valley where we are acquiring lands. The people that work in the Rio Grande Refuge are much more restrained in what they can say publicly and what they do publicly than the normal refuge people.
Kevin: When you worked for the Service, if you can think back, is there a particular quality out of all of them that you consider for someone to have in order to be a successful manager of a refuge.
Harold: Well, I think to be a successful wildlife refuge manager, you’ve got to like wildlife. You’ve got to know something about and understand land in the sense of ecology of land and the timing of seasons and so on and what happens at what time. Right now too many of our managers are attempting to manage by cookbook recipes rather than by the feel of the seasonal changes and what’s going on in their lands. I don’t think you manage lands successfully that way. You may be able to manage it to meet your requirements from the regional office, but you don’t really meet the potential of the refuge when you do everything according to the plan set out before you. You’ve got to have enough flexibility that you and flex with the seasons. Some years you have lots of rain, some years you have drought. You’ve got to take advantage of the seasons to be a successful manager.
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Kevin: Were involved with the acquisition and creation of any refuges during your tenure?
Harold: I never was the first manger on any refuge. I understand the first manager had a real tough job.
Kevin: I was just curious what your opinion was on the various obstacles and problems of creating a new refuge during the 50’s and 60’s.
Harold: At Lacreek we had some land that had just been acquired, about 2500 acres, and we did have some problems with it in the sense of teaching or educating the people that they couldn’t do the things on that land that they had been doing before. I think this is multiplied many times when you get into a completely new refuge and a large size area.
Kevin: Are there any other issues or questions that you would like to talk about? Or are there any other issues that pop into mind? Feel free to talk about it.
Harold: I think one of our problems is one that we’ve hit on before. We have very few people in the refuge system that really understand land management in the sense of having an inherent feel for the land in that they were raised on the land and live on the refuge and know when it is critically important to do this or that.
I see it on most every refuge that we visit. According to their plan they are going to prescribe burn, and you know if you are using fire as a tool, you are after a certain objective and that usually is for raising green vegetation for geese to feed on, or creating a different type of vegetation for cover. If you do it at the proper time you accomplish this. If you do it a month later, you miss the boat and you might better not do it at all. And yet, many times you see this done.
The same with crops where, unfortunately, we have had to depend on so called cooperative farmers to farm a lot of our land on shaves. They seem to have a bad habit of getting their crops in on time and ours not. Again, you’ve got to have it in a certain time; you’ve got to take advantage of the weather, and this, so often, is a failure on our part. 9
We end up with these same people on our land, disking the ground black over winter, the soil blowing and nothing out there for wildlife on the lands that they farm.
Where we have a cooperative farming program we are taking about giving away 60 to 75% of the part that is farmed. I think it is a bad program, actually. I think we farm it ourselves, use less land, and do it well. I think we should be looking closer that we are picking up some people that are inherent land mangers rather than somebody that has come off the concrete and wants to be a land manager. They can lean but they don’t have the feeling for it -- not necessarily that rural people have it either because a lot of rural people don’t know how to farm anymore. They don’t do it. Their parents wouldn’t allow them to get on their expensive equipment.
We have different types of refuges. Mainly we have the migratory waterfowl refuges, the unique refuges, such as the Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, which is begin acquired by Land and Water Conservation Funds. There are quite different objectives at Rio Grande Valley we are trying to preserve unique flora and fauna. I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about this. I think maybe there is even some envy and bitterness amongst the refuge people because they don’t understand that the Land and Water Conservation Act refuges are not competing for the same money, in the sense of duck stamp money, et cetera.
Here is one of the hard things to keep in the minds of the refuge people, and certainly much harder to keep in the mind of the public that these completely different objectives and source of funds and different obligations to the public.
Kevin: You mentioned that in recent years, the way the land is managed has become much more rigid and worried more about objectives and the plans and stuff like that. How does that differ from the 50’s when you came on board? You weren’t tied to master plans as much?
Harold: No, we weren’t. We had a kind of general objective of what we were attempting to do, and we had a lot of flexibility in obtaining that.
I was one of the first people to do master planning and to live with my master plan. In 1962-1963 we master planned Squaw Creek Refuge in northwest Missouri and I 10
was there for 10 years. I found that master plan gave me a lot of freedom of operating. I already had approval for the things that we were doing. If I stayed within that master, I didn’t even have to ask anybody else if I could do this or that. So, that was great. We had a regional director at that time that you would tell you, “Now this is not engraved in stone and if you find that this doesn’t fit then we can change it.” But, of course you would go through the supervisors to get approval, but I found that master plan gave me a lot of freedom to operate on. Of course, since I was a part of developing it, you could understand that it would give me a lot freedom.
During those years we came up with some other objectives that we had to meet, I think fortunately. The Endangered Species Act and the public regard for all wildlife creatures had made it necessary that we broaden our approach to where we manage for all the living forms on earth. Many of the managers were doing this anyway, but it was real nice to have this accepted by the whole system rather than just doing it on your own.
Kevin: Did you have a chance to work with or met J. Clark Salyer III?
Harold: I met J. Clark Salyer several times even after he was blind, I knew him before as the Chief. But after he was blind, I was in Washington one time and rode up the elevator with him and spoke to him, knowing who he was. I was just visiting on annual leave and I hadn’t been in the refuge office long before a message came around saying he wanted me to come to his office. At that time I was at Squaw Creek Refuge and he asked me about practically every tree on the refuge and all the things that you would think he would never even know about when he was full sighted. He had a terrific memory as well as being a terrific individual. He started the refuge system.
Kevin: Anything else?
Harold: I worked for Fran Gillette for about 10 years before he transferred out of Region 3. I think he did a lot of good things for the refuge. He certainly upgraded the system, where we were originally managed by WPA foreman and CCC foreman, people like that, and he brought it up to professional standard where the normal manager was a 11
graduate from wildlife school. He also salvaged those managers who by their own initiative, reading and so on had been able to do professional work. Mr. Gillette had been the refuge supervisor in Region 3 and he was the regional director in Atlanta. I understand he had a much harder time moving Region 4 than in Region 3. Then of course, he became chief of refuges in Washington. But, he had a lot to do with upgrading the standards of refuge managers and with them the refuges.
Kevin: You mean the professional standards?
Harold: Yes. One of his main objectives was to put this on a professional footing. I was ki
Richard S. Rodgers
No full textRichard S. Rodgers oral history interview as conducted by Kevin Kilcullen.
Mr. Rodgers first went to work for Fort Peck Game Range, which is now Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge.
Organization: FWS
Name: Richard S. Rodgers
Years: 1952-1988
Program: Refuges
Keywords: Biography, Employees (USFWS), History, Military, Rangelands, Wildlife refuges, Game management, Surveying, Vegetation, Waterfowl, Youth, Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge, William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge, Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Comple
Bob Burwell
No full textRobert "Bob" Burwell oral history transcript as conducted by Kevin Kilcullen. Mr. Burwell worked in River Basin Studies before becoming Regional Director for Region 3. He discusses the Wetlands Acquisition Program and challenges faced from land owners and other agencies. Organization: FWS Years Worked: 1944-1971 Program(s): River Basin Studies, Regional Director Keywords: River Basin Managment, Regional Director1
Oral History Cover Sheet
Name: Robert “Bob” W. Burwell
Date of Interview: March 11, 1988
Location of Interview: McAllen, Texas (?)
Interviewer: Kevin Kilcullen
Approximate years worked for Fish and Wildlife Service: 1944-1971
Offices and Field Stations Worked, Positions Held: River Basin Studies, Albuquerque, New Mexico; River Basin Studies, Billings, Montana; Missouri River Basin Studies covering Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, North and South Dakota; Regional Director for Region 3, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Most Important Projects: Wetlands Acquisition Program
Colleagues and Mentors: Albert Day, Rudolf Dieffenbach, John Gottschalk, Dan Janzen
Most Important Issues: protecting wetlands
Brief Summary of Interview: Mr. Burwell starts out discussing previous employment before joining the Fish and Wildlife Service. He discusses the various River Basin Studies offices he worked out of before becoming the Regional Director in Region 3 (Minneapolis office), where he would remain for 17 years before retiring. He talks briefly about the Wetlands Acquisition Program, and challenges that they faced from land owners, other agencies, and political figures in trying to protect wetlands.
Keywords: employee, history, biography, work of the service, wetlands, River Basins, management, Regional Director
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Kevin: …and give some information on background and your career in the Service.
Bob: Well, Kevin, my background is forestry at the University of Michigan and 1937 is when I graduated. Jobs were hard to come by at that particular time and I was fortunate to find a job with Aro Exploration company in Tulsa, OK, who had a contract to make aerial maps of the State of Missouri and the state of Minnesota. It was for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration.
The war came about and the aerial mapping was something that brought all of us into it. When the war came along, the U.S. Corps of Engineers offered me a job because I had some knowledge on aerial mapping. The Tulsa District Office of the Corps of Engineers took me in. Later on my job with the Corps was liaison with the Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas Game and Fish Departments.
I was active in the planning and construction of reservoirs in the Tulsa District which covered Arkansas, most of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. It was at that point then that I worked with the state game departments and the Fish and Wildlife Service Soil Conservation Service, and local interests.
After the war began to end, that’s when the Fish and Wildlife Service developed its River Basin Studies Program. My background contained bits of luck—being in the right place at the right time. My dean at the University of Michigan and some of my other profs were the ones that trained me in such a way that I was able to take advantage of opportunities.
Kevin: Were you still working with the Corps when you were offered a job with River Basins?
Bob: Yes.
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Kevin: The job offer came from where? Washington? The regional office there?
Bob: The director at that time was Albert Day. His assistant in directing River Basin Studies in Washington was Rudolf Dieffenbach. These two men made the decision.
Kevin: you mentioned that you had moved to Albuquerque in 1944?
Bob: Yes, and we remained in Albuquerque for 6 years. Then was moved to Billings, MT basin studies operation there and the man that was in charge of it, Mr. John Gottschalk, was transferred to Washington for higher duties. I was moved to the Missouri River Basin Studies, at that time. It covered Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, North and South Dakota—it was a large operation.
Some months later the Fish and Wildlife Regional Director in Minneapolis and the upper Midwest was transferred to Washington to be the director of the Service. His name was Dan Janzen—a fine man. And a brilliant man. When he was made the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, I was named to the Regional Directors position in Minneapolis to replace Dan Janzen over from Billings Montana for that particular region. That’s where I finally retired.
Kevin: So you became region director for Region 3? That’s what it was called at the time?
Bob: Yes, that is right.
Kevin: Could I ask you a question about the River Basin Studies? What happened with those initial studies that were done? Is that something that the reports were given to the Secretary of the Interior for him to make a decision, or what was the result of all the studies? [While in the Washington area, this matter would com efrom Mr. James O. Stevenson]
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Bob: I really don’t know how to answer it. There was some opposition to River Basin Studies on the part of some of the states. There were political problems also, and strong local interests.
For example, North Dakota, which was and is concerned with the river basin operations because of the drainage of wetlands in that state. Too, we had to contend with land owners of all kinds, as well as the Bureau of Reclamations who didn’t want us messing around with plans that they had in mind. There were governors and state senators and representatives who had to operate on what their constituents wanted. It was touch and go in a lot of difficulties in trying to protect wetlands in North Dakota and South Dakota, particularly those two, and to some extent Minnesota. It would tax anybody to try to solve those problems.
Little by little, the pendulum began to swing over in favor of doing some good for water loving birds and animals. You’ve seen it happen here in your lifetime, seeing it go from not being able to protect the wetlands to protecting its values. That’s what has happened over the years and much of that is due to the River basin Studies efforts.
Too, many of the refuges are the result of studies and efforts made by River Basin Studies to save difficult situations.
Kevin: You were regional director in Region 3 then and when did you retire from that position?
Bob: It was 1971.
Kevin: So you were regional director for 17 years?
Bob: Yes, 1954 to 1971.
Kevin: If you could name one issue or one event that happened during your career with the Fish and Wildlife Service that was the most influential issue, in your opinion, that really affected the direction and the future of the Service, what would that be?
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Bob: Mr. Gottschalk or Jim Stevenson would be your best info. on that question.
Kevin: You mentioned previously that the role of the CCC and the people that came out of that and came to work for the Fish and Wildlife Services, could you tell me a little more about that? How important was that was?
Bob: I didn’t have anything to do with the CCC, but when CCC started to close up, we had a number of those operations in the upper Midwest—North Dakota and Minnesota, for example. The CCC men were looking for jobs and we took many of them. Training there a necessity, many of them were married, of course, and needed a job. Many of them joined the Fish and Wildlife Service. Some of those people from the CCC had college training. For example, civil engineers, biologists, teachers, forestry, etc. They contributed quite a bit to the staff working for refuges.
Not many of them were in River Basin Studies because that really wasn’t their interest. It was something different for them. But the CCC boys came in. They knew how do a man’s work and appreciated to have it; they could do a lot of things. They were good people. If they were fortunate enough to get a job, they were going to stick with it….CCC boys were good ones.
I imagine you grew up through some of the times I’m talking about.
Kevin: I’ve heard quite a bit about them. In fact, many of our lands and refuges still have the buildings that were built during that time period. They are still around.
Did you do quite a bit of aerial mapping work for the River Basin thing? I mean, like mapping river basins out?
Bob: The aerial thing I mentioned earlier was a part of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. I remember what Minnesota looked like. You looked down and there wouldn’t be anything but cattails, and dry lakes, everything was dry; dust and dry.
Aerial mapping that we did had been turned over to the federal agencies with various interests. Our maps were sent there and improved and made available to different agencies of government; Agriculture, Mines, Minerals, etc. 6
Kevin: So you didn’t actually do that work for Basin Studies, you did that work before that?
Bob: Yes, that mapping was done before River Basins. It was related to the drought and agriculture. By the time we got River Basins going, then we could go to Washington where they make the maps and get those and we could operate from then on.
Kevin: Maybe you could talk a little bit about the wetland acquisitions program when you were in Minneapolis as the regional director. How did that come about and what was the purpose of the program?
Bob: When Mr. Dan Janzen was put in charge of the Midwest region for Fish and Wildlife Service, he was a remarkable man, a brilliant man. He was a forestry graduate from the University of Oregon; I don’t know how he got started with the Service. He probably filed for a federal exam, I’m sure he would have made a good one.
I think Dan was the first person in a high position that became concerned about the draining of the wetlands in the region that he directed for Fish and Wildlife Service, particularly in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Those were the main state where draining was going on. Dan worked hard to alert wildlife organizations that we were acquainted with, and he worked like the dickens to get their support. He traveled quite a bit getting people to understand the value of wetlands. He studied that problem like nobody else could do. He had a good background and education in farming and agriculture and public affairs. When he was moved to Washington to become the Director of the Service, he had much more influence with federal and state and local interest. He gave us a real base to work on.
Mr. John Gottschalk is one of the men you have on your list and you will probably want to talk to him; you’ll like John. He was named Director of the Service on the sudden death of Mr. Janzen. The problem was largely political. Mr. Gottschalk understood the wetlands problems thoroughly. The farmers and ranchers would go to their congressmen and senators; the governors. They just didn’t cotton to the idea that 7
wetlands had important values. One reason that it was that way was because refuges had come in ahead of this drainage and they had dealt with some of the refuge people, and they didn’t get their way with some of those refuges so they were against the Fish and Wildlife Service right off the bat. Mr. Janzen had to go to the House or the Senate to explain things to people. He did a good job of selling but it was still difficult.
We had a few anti wetlands governors, and we had some very interested governors to deal with. Even the best of them, you could see it was bothering them because it was going to hurt some of their constituents, farmers in that area. Little by little understanding got better and better, and landowners began to take steps to protect their wetlands.
One of the things that hurt us, Kevin, and bothered the governors too were the actions taken by agricultural interests, both state and federal and local. Quite logically these interests felt it was their duty to stand up with their constituents, the ranchers and the farmers.
Kevin: When this was initially started with Janzen, were there special requests made to Congress for special appropriations to purchase these lands or acquire them? Is that how it came about?
Bob: Director Janzen would usually find people to talk to.
Kevin: The state conservation agency or organization, were they generally backing what you were trying to do? Or were they opposed to it and siding on the part of the farming, agricultural interests and the state game agencies?
Bob: They were generally against us. The SCS and the ASCS, they didn’t stand up even though some of them had people who really knew better. For example, the SCS hired quite a few biologists, wildlife biologists, over the years. That made some interesting things; when a Michigan wildlife man was sitting right across the table from an Oklahoma SCS man when you knew he knew better than that.
It was a funny time, looking back on it. I wouldn’t have changed it for anything. 8
Kevin: Thinking back when you started working for the Fish and Wildlife Service compared how the Fish and Wildlife Service is set up today, what is the big difference that you see? What is the biggest change, the biggest difference?
Bob: Well, Kevin, it’s been 10 years since I retired and I haven’t been close to the operation.
Kevin: Is there anything else you’d like to add that we haven’t already covered?
Bob: I don’t think so, Kevin. My mind is so jammed anymore that it is difficult for me. I have major memory loss and inability to concentrate, hence my suggestion that you might with to chat with John Gottschalk and/or Jim Stevenson for better info.
Short Biographical Sketch
Place and date of birth: Winsted, Connecticut on September 8, 1915
High School education: Graduate Tulsa, Oklahoma High School
College Education: Oklahoma State University 1934 & 1935
Curriculum: Pre-forestry subjects
College education: University of Michigan
Curriculum: School of Forestry & Conservation 1936-37
Graduation: 1937
Marriage: January 20th, 1940 to Alda Eleanor Nlibeck, Universtiy graduate 1938
Children: Nancy, born 1941; John, born 1944, and youngest Robert Jr., born 195
Nelius Nelson
No full textNelius Nelson oral history interview as conducted by Kevin Kilcullen.
Mr. Nelson had been teaching for ten years before he got a phone call from his high school science teacher asking him to go to Bismarck, North Dakota to do some biological work. Knowing that it would only be temporary, he decided to go. Mr. Nelson would work at several different refuges before retiring with over 30 years working for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Organization: FWS
Name: Nelius Nelson
Years:
Program: Refuges
Keywords: Biography, Biologists (USFWS), Employees (USFWS), History, Wildlife refuges, Waterfowl, Law enforcement, Youth, Diseases, Mammals, Lakes, Work of the Service, Wetlands, Lake Ardock National Wildlife Refuge, Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge, Valentine National Wildlife Refuge, Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, Waterfowl, Canada Geese, Employees (USFWS)1
Oral History Cover Sheet
Name: Nelius Nelson
Date of Interview: March 8, 1988
Interviewer: Kevin Kilcullen
Approximate years worked for Fish and Wildlife Service: 30 + years
Offices and Field Stations Worked, Positions Held: Bismarck, North Dakota; Labor Patrolman at Lake Ardock National Wildlife Refuge, North Dakota; Refuge Manager at Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge, North Dakota; Valentine National Wildlife Refuge, Nebraska; Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, Minnesota.
Most Important Projects: Opening up non-use lands for waterfowl; trying to get Canada Geese to pair up and nest at Arrowwood.
Colleagues and Mentors: Fran Gillett
Most Important Issues: Lack of funds for certain programs.
Brief Summary of Interview: Mr. Nelson had been teaching for ten years before he got a phone call from his high school science teacher asking him to go to Bismarck, North Dakota to do some biological work. Knowing that it would only be temporary, he decided to go. After that, Mr. Nelson would work at several different refuges before retiring with over 30 years working for the Fish and Wildlife Service. He shares a few stories about his time with the Service and how he thinks it has changed. Biographical sketch follows the transcript.
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Kevin: Talk about your background, your career, when you started with the Service, and when you retired and some more information. That would be a good start.
Nelius: I started teaching in 1928 and for ten years I taught in rural schools. Then one day I got a letter from my former high school science instructor. He wanted to know if I would come and work with him doing biological work on the new easement refuges being established by the Bureau of Biological Survey using WPA funds. The reason he asked me was because during my high school years we used to work together on many projects, building radios, going on field trips, and numerous other projects. I was right in the middle of a school term and I had to get a release before I could take on this job. I was interested in the job because teaching salaries were going down due to the Depression. My background was only two years at a teachers college, but my high school instructor told me that he would like to have me come down. He knew I could handle a lot of the biology problems they had, and go out to these refuges that they were establishing in the Bureau of Biological Survey at that time at Bismarck, North Dakota. They were establishing new refuges; they were constructing dams and so forth and acquiring easements. During the month of December, I finally decided I’d take it on, although he said it may last 6 months or it may last a year. In December of 1936, I received a release and reported to work with the Bureau of Biological Survey on January 1, 1937, and I worked a lot with young people that were on relief work. These boys were living near a lot of these projects and they would earn a little money doing bird counts and collecting data. We sent them a form sheet every so often to fill out. I was on the road quite a bit during the spring and summer months contacting these boys to instruct them in bird identification, aquatics that provided cover and food, and showed them how to build bird shelters for upland game birds. While in the field I gathered biological data needed to prepare land use plans for each refuge. I stayed with the program for three years until it folded up.
Three years had given me a wide range of experience, from supervising WPA crews on work projects to working with NYA youths that were assigned to the various refuges throughout North Dakota. On one of the refuges, there was a problem with botulism every summer. I supervised the clean-up job of removing all the dead birds; all 3
sick birds were treated until they recovered. Under the direction of my supervisor many experiments were carried out, which were not related to the botulism outbreaks, finding out the food value of various marsh plants to waterfowl. During the winter months we carried out numerous botulism experiments using mice from the field sent to us by our NYA boys living near some of the easement refuges. Summaries of the experiments were submitted to the Washington Bureau. I was very much involved with taking pictures, both still and 16 mm movies. We had set up a dark room in our office so that we could develop our own film, both still and movies. One winter I put together a 25 minute, 16 mm, black and white film which showed the accomplishments of the WPA programs on the newly established easement refuges. This film was shown to the WPA administration and at the International Wildlife Conference at Baltimore, Maryland. Shortly after the film had been reviewed by the WPA people in Washington, our Bismarck office was allocated an additional half million dollars to carry out the refuge easement program. The second film that we put together was a story on the Chase Lake Refuge; this 15 minute, 16 mm film did not have any captions like the first film. The captions on the first film were prepared by my supervisor and our Chief Mr. Steen; I would photograph the captions and develop the film on homemade drums. The film strips would be negatives which would give us a caption in white letters; occasionally we needed some captions on the film positive so a reversal process was used in processing the film. This film production took a lot of time which meant midnight week after week as there was a deadline. We tried to locate the films several years later but the Washington Office was never able to find them. Plans had been made to put the captions on a soundtrack and to reproduce several copies of the first film. The bureaucracy bogged down someplace.
After they had closed the Bismarck office, I had already filled out an examination blank for labor patrolman at a refuge because I knew that perhaps I could get started at the bottom and work my way up since I didn’t have four years of college. I only waited about a month and I received a notice from the Minneapolis office that there was an opening at Lake Ardock, north of Grand Forks, North Dakota. They would assign me there temporarily until all the paperwork had been cleared. 4
So, in 1939 in October, I started with the refuge system as a labor patrolman. I worked on the Ardock Refuge and 15 other refuges in the northeast area of North Dakota. I was familiar with all the areas as a result of my three years in Bismarck working as a biologist; I had been to all these places before.
I was out on the road quite a bit checking dams, collecting wildlife data for future plans, doing minor repair work on dams and spillways, and there was always a lot of reports to make out. That is when I made out my first narrative report which everybody had to do. My immediate supervisor was the Refuge Manager at the Sullys Hill Game Preserve located at Ft. Totten, N.D. When possible I assisted with the buffalo, elk and deer harvesting at Sullys Hill. After three years at Lake Ardock, the war came along and there was a vacancy at the Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge. The manger there had been called to duty so the Regional Office asked me to move with my family to Arrowwood in July of 1942. It so happened that I went for a physical and I didn’t pass so I just stayed on at Arrowwood.
I spent fifteen years at Arrowwood as the refuge manager, probably longer than a lot of fellows stayed on one refuge. I was offered other refuges including a transfer to California to work with depredation problems. I had a good working relationship with the local people and whenever they heard rumors of transferring, they would circulate a petition and submit it to the Regional Office. I personally feel that the refuge manager should become involved in many of the community activities such as working with Scouting, community plays, fire departments, centennials, and other community doings. It does take a lot of your free time but it is a big asset to the Service as well as to oneself. I knew the day was coming when I would have to go to another refuge, and the Minneapolis office offered me Valentine National Wildlife Refuge in Nebraska. I accepted and moved there the last part of December in 1957.
I stayed at the Valentine Refuge for almost ten years and really enjoyed working in the Sandhills. We had a beautiful area, one with 32 lakes. It was all grasslands, not a furrow plowed on the entire 62,000 acres. There was an abundance of native flowers and a fair population of prairie chickens besides an increasing sharp-tailed grouse population. Since I had worked on waterfowl refuges before, I really enjoyed working at Valentine. There was a good working relationship with the local ranchers. 5
An outstanding land use plan had been set up by my predecessor; it involved rotating all grazing and haying units. The program had been set up with much help from the local Soil Conservation Service.
I was beginning to get close to where I could retire, so the wife and I, kind of looking forward, thought maybe we should accept a transfer to another refuge if it was offered. A vacancy opened up at the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge near Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. The Regional Office offered it to me and I accepted. It was the first forested area that I had had any experience with, so I enjoyed being able to work on an area that was entirely different from where I had been at the Valentine Refuge and at Arrowwood. I did miss working with the new wetlands program in Nebraska that had been started only a couple years before leaving. I stayed at the Tamarac Refuge until I retired in 1969. We moved back to Jamestown where the wife originally came from and settled down.
Kevin: If you think back in your mind, are there two events or milestones during your career that were the most important as far as the Service and the development of the refuge system in the Service?
Nelius: One of the things that come to my mind are the CCC days. The program had already started when I joined the Service, but it was very instrumental in the development of many of our refuges. The Arrowwood Refuge had a camp on it shortly before I arrived there. They spent, I believe, almost three years there putting up fences and so forth, and signs, and dikes. I feel that the CCC boys played a big part in getting a lot of our refuges started where it was possible to have a camp; without all this labor, many of the jobs would not have been completed for many years.
Another program that came along was the wetland acquisition program, acquiring areas that had a good potential of becoming valuable for wildlife use before they would be lost forever. Some of the new programs were short term, like the Department of Agriculture had different farm programs, like the soil bank program. They all played a part in helping wildlife. As a result of all these new areas, the Service has added many wetland acres to the refuge system. 6
As I drive around the country in North Dakota, I see a lot of wetland acres. Frequently, I stop to see how much duck use there is. Most of them are in “non-use” and as a result the area is infested with predators and shorelines are closed with rushes and cattails. The only problem that I can see now with this program is that the Service lacks funds to manage so many areas. Many of the acquired glacial ponds are gradually filling in with cattails and other rushes. They’ve become so closed in that a lot of the waterfowl do not use them like they should. What they need to do is to be able to open them up, by some grazing, haying, burning, as a last resort or ditching. Even draining the area for a year or two may help improve some areas. Ducks like to leave the pond by just walking out into the surround area to nest. Since most of the wetlands are in “non-use” they have become havens for predators such as foxes and skunks.
An example of this is as follows: When I was at the Valentine Refuge, we had three natural areas. There had been no grazing or haying or any other land use since 1935. Every spring we ran breeding pair counts; later on we ran brood counts on most of the refuge, and we did all this on horseback, riding the shorelines. We also used horses to drag rope with tin cans to flush birds to find their nests. Whenever we work the natural “non-use” areas, we found a lot of fewer birds using the shorelines because they were so dense; they weren’t broken up. As soon as we reached an area where livestock had a chance to break down some of the cover we would find birds. Our grazing program was always very controlled so livestock were not damaging the range land, and as a result the shorelines still had a lot of cover; this is where we would find the birds.
I know there have been a lot of biologists that want to go into a complete “non-use” for a lot of areas. So many of the wetlands have become loaded with cattails and other rushes and receive very little use. I know of one wetland area that the Service owns about a third of the area, the balance is privately owned and is used by livestock mainly in the fall of the year. In the spring of the year, you’ll find the breeding pairs here and the broods during the summer months. I’ve noticed now within the last couple of years that the Service has become aware of this poor utilization by waterfowl on many of the non-use wetlands and are now beginning to go in with heavy equipment to open the shorelines and even ditching in the badly loaded cattail areas. I understand that Ducks Unlimited has provided some of the funds to help the Service carry out this work. I’ve noticed it up 7
in North Dakota and I think that it is going to be a big help, but more funds are needed by the Service to be able to carry out the improvements on many of the wetlands.
In summarizing some of my notes, I’ll add the following: The wildlife refuge program has made many changes from the CCC days to what it is in 1988. With the human population increase, the need for more land for producing food and fiber and for personal gain, many acres of sub-marginal land has been farmed or grazed. This resulted in the drainage of thousands of acres. Wetlands began disappearing at alarming rates. Many programs initiated by wildlife services of various agencies sprung up. Some were merely short-term programs but all helped. Today, we will have a long way to go to save not only the sport of hunting we used to enjoy in the early days, but to preserve many species of wildlife now destined to become only pictures in our books for future generations.
I recall vividly as a lad six to 12 years old, the abundance of ducks, geese, grouse and other birds. My cousins on a farm in North Dakota, every fall used to take off in their Model T Ford for the Lake Alice area, which originally started out as an easement refuge that was established in 1934 and 1935, to hunt geese and ducks. I was amazed at the abundance of birds they always brought back. In those days many of the birds were cleaned and either salted down or canned.
I also have a little on the Chase Lake Refuge that sticks out in my mind. I recall my first trip to Chase Lake in 1937 while stationed at the Bismarck office. Water levels were low in the main lake but the freshwater pond created by the WPA in 1935-36 on the creek draining into the main lake had a good supply of water. To my knowledge this freshwater pond has never been dry. Many ducks and other birds have made use of this area as a result of this small development.
Several times each year I visited the Chase Lake area from 1937 to 1958 banding pelicans, gulls, cormorants and in 1937 less than 50 young pelicans reached maturity. By 1957, the production was well over a 1,000. My supervisor and I spent many days camping overnight to study the wildlife using the area in the late thirties.
We almost lost Chase Lake as a wildlife refuge one year; I received a notice from the regional office to take down all the boundary signs. A local car dealer had acquired some land bordering the main lake and had questioned the easement on his deed. 8
Fortunately, after deeper investigation by the Service, the verdict was changed and we replaced the signs.
Today Chase Lake refuge has grown with the purchase of additional acres. Now this applies to the many other refuges that were established during the WPA days. There were 76 easement refuges started during those WPA days while I worked in the Bismarck office. I’ve been to every one of them. Some of them have been abandoned, but most of them have survived; some dams have had to be rebuilt. I think it was a very good program, in addition to the CCC Program that they carried on.
Kevin: I wonder if you could talk about employees that you hired on refuges. What kind of qualities or qualifications did you look for in an employee when you were hiring for a position?
Nelius: When I was at the Valentine Refuge, we always, every summer, had summer students from schools interested in wildlife careers, and I always kept records of their ability to do the various jobs they were assigned and their attitudes. Most of the students did everything to the best of their ability. We had them working with the biologist that came to the refuge from the federal and state offices. There was only one student that didn’t meet our standards; I found that he did not always tell the truth. I always looked for students that had a lot of enthusiasm to learn more about wildlife conservation. We had one student, Jerry Kobriger, whom we hired two years in a row because he became very deeply interested in our grouse program. We had prairie chickens and sharp-tailed grouse at the Valentine Refuge. He worked up a project to learn more about the grouse behavior by attaching radios to the birds. He, later on after he left the Fish and wildlife Service that summer, was hired by the State Game Department in North Dakota as the Upland game biologist. He is still with the State today as their chief biologist working on Upland game birds, especially grouse.
Kevin: If you could pick one trait for someone to become a successful manager, what would it have been?
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Nelius: Mainly interest and honesty. I’d say his interest in wildlife. You can usually tell if they’re really interested if they put any extra effort into their work and keep good records generally is what I look for.
Kevin: What do you see as the major differences between the refuge system in the 40s and 50s and the way it is today, other than the size of it?
Nelius: The refuge system as I worked through the years, I put in 30 some years, was more relaxing. I don’t think we were under as much pressure. We had supervisors that really worked with us. Of course, one of my first field supervisors was Fran Gillett that I met back in 1939 when he came to Lake Ardock. That was the first time I met him. I believe their office was, at that time, at St. Louis, as I recall, but I’m not sure about that. We had good supervisors. After Fran left we had Forest Carpenter.
Attending the conferences in Minneapolis, we didn’t meet every year, they gave us a lot of encouragement. We got together in groups and discussed various problems. I think we were able to do that because we were small enough so that it could be done that way. Since many of the Washington personnel attended to speak, we got to know these people.
Today, I stop at quite a few refuges and I never feel that they are close to the refuges themselves as we were in those days. We had to live on the refuges most of the time. By living on the refuge you became part of it, you became part of the community, you worked with the local people and the various programs that we had on the refuge, like grazing and haying or farming and fishing programs. I remember for a number of years we didn’t have any fishing because we didn’t have a good water supply at Arrowwood. Today, in going to some of the refuges I find that the managers don’t even live on the refuge anymore. They’re not part of the refuge. They’re distant, and when you talk to local people they say, “Well, we hardly ever see the refuge manager because he does not attend any of our functions, fire department meetings or any special programs that go on at the local towns.” I feel that this is one thing that is missing today in our refuge system. You don’t have the good neighbor effect that you should, and that is the one part that I’ve noticed as I’ve visited refuges. 10
Kevin: Is there a particular period of time where you can recall that the Service in the refuge system started to place more emphasis on visitors and public use, or did that grow gradually or was there a certain period when that became really important?
Nelius: It grew gradually. We didn’t put a lot of emphasis on visitor use when I was at Arrowwood. Since I left the Arrowwood Refuge they now have a visitor’s center, and probably more people stop there to visit. By building a visitor center they have new offices too. The visitor program, I
Marcus C. Nelson
No full textMarcus C. Nelson oral history as conducted by Kevin Kilcullen.
Mr. Nelson discusses the various refuges and offices he worked throughout this career, major projects he worked on including establishing two refuges and writing a new refuge manual with Forrest Carpenter. He shares several stories of J. Clark Salyer II, being audited by the Civil Service while a Regional Supervisor in Albuquerque, and talks some about Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and Alaska Native Interest Land Conservation Act.
Organization: FWS
Name:Marcus C. Nelson
Years: 1944-
Program: Refuges; Administration
Keywords:employee, history, biography, wildlife refuges, management, work of the Service, waterfowl, legislation, policies, Alaska Native Interest Land Conservation Act, Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, diseases, wildlife management1
Oral History Cover Sheet
Name: Marcus C. Nelson
Date of Interview: July 15, 1988
Interviewer: Kevin Kilcullen
Approximate years worked for Fish and Wildlife Service: 1944-?
Offices and Field Stations Worked, Positions Held: Student positions: Medicine Lake National Refuge, Montana; at Bear River Research Station, Utah; Permanent positions: Bear River National Wildlife Refuge, Utah; sent to Oklahoma and Texas to help establish Tishomingo National Wildlife Refuge and Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge; Refuge Manager at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge, Texas; Regional Assistant Supervisor for Region 2, Albuquerque, New Mexico; Regional Supervisor for Region 2, Albuquerque, New Mexico; Chief of the Refuge Division, Washington D.C
Most Important Projects: establishing Tishomingo and Hagerman National Wildlife Refuges; writing a New Refuge Manual with Forrest Carpenter
Colleagues and Mentors: Dr. D.I. Rasmussen (Director of the Wildlife Unit at Utah State College), Kenneth MacDonald, Forrest Carpenter, Phil Dupont, J. Clark Salyer II, Dick Griffith, Harvey Nelson, Lynn Greenwalt, Harold Regan, Bill Ackernecht, Cecil Williams, E.R. Kalmbach, George Barclay
Most Important Issues: waterfowl botulism outbreak during his summer work at Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge; opposition to Tishomingo National Wildlife Refuge
Brief Summary of Interview: Mr. Nelson discusses being a student hire for the Fish and Wildlife Service and working a number of summers before graduating and obtaining full-time work permanent work with the Fish and Wildlife Service after working four years with the Utah Fish and Game Department. He discusses the various refuges and offices he worked throughout this career, major projects he worked on including establishing two refuges and writing a new refuge manual with Forrest Carpenter. He shares several stories of J. Clark Salyer II, being audited by the Civil Service while a Regional Supervisor in Albuquerque, and talks some about Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and Alaska Native Interest Land Conservation Act.
Keywords: employee, history, biography, wildlife refuges, management, work of the Service, waterfowl, legislation, policies, Alaska Native Interest Land Conservation Act, Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, diseases, wildlife management
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Kevin: If you could state your name and we’ll start the discussion. Give a little background on you education and your career with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Marcus: My name is Marcus C. Nelson. I was born and raised in Brigham, Utah. I attended college at Utah State University--it was called Utah State College then. The largest number of students we had while I was there was 3,000 and we thought that was a lot. I got my B.S. degree there.
I worked with the Wildlife Research Unit which was located at Utah State. It was headed up in those days by Dr. D.I. Rasmussen who was pretty well known in his field. He later became Chief of Wildlife for the Forest Service here in Washington.
I started working for the Fish and Wildlife Service in the summer or 1937 while still in school. I graduated in 1938 and continued graduate work for a couple of years after that, until I could find a job. In the summer of 1937, as a student aide I worked on Medicine Lake Refuge in Montana.
At Medicine Lake Refuge in the summer of 1937, which was during the drought years up there, they had their first ever waterfowl botulism outbreak. I was a little familiar with botulism, western duck sickness, having lived in the vicinity of Bear River Refuge all my life. All we knew to do then was to put the ducks on fresh water. That was the first time I observed mallards that had to learn to eat corn. The penned up birds that we had brought in sick with botulism were fed corn and they wouldn’t eat it. They soon learned and eventually they would hit it as soon as we threw it in.
I was a student intern on a WAE base at the Bear River Research Station in Utah from ’38 through ’39. I worked there full-time in the summers and part-time during the school season. I worked at Bear River for Cecil Williams, research biologist, on this part-time basis. For a couple of summers I worked at Bear River Refuge for the Denver Research Lab, under its director Mr. E.R. Kalmbach. He was the man who discovered that clostridium botulinum was the bacterial disease responsible for “western duck sickness”. He isolated the botulism bacteria in waterfowl way back in the early 1900’s.
Kalmbach told me a story about finding the clostridium botulinum bacteria. This is kind of a unique story, and only a few of us know it, it’s never been published. I got to know Kalmbach pretty well working for him at Bear River Refuge. He used to come 3
over from Denver. I was doing waterfowl nesting studies for him that first several years of my career, but Kalmbach used to come over and go out in the field with me a couple of times in the summer. He would get out and let the mosquitoes eat him--and believe me there were mosquitoes! Would you believe we wore head nets and gloves and leather jackets in the summer!
He told me this story of his discovery of botulism. He had been assigned as a biologist to a crew to work on “western duck sickness” of course, they had been “posting” ducks and trying to find something concrete and the disease. In 1913 it killed more than 300,000 ducks on Bear River Marshes alone. For a number of years it was taking upwards of 100,000. You could walk on dead ducks. There are old pictures of that happening. But he was working in the laboratory and had put some liver from dead ducks in a petri dish and had put them on a window sill and forgotten about them. As he told me, they finally began to smell enough to get his attention. They had putrefied. He thought, well what the heck. So, he took some of the liquid and vaccinated a duck with it. The duck got sick. This gave him a whole new clue. They went through their laboratory procedures and produced a refined toxin and began to experiment with ducks, and found that it was the lethal factor that had been responsible for the loss of the ducks. Until that time they had thought it was slat water poisoning or selenium or something like that. In fact, Bear River Refuge was built on a contour to try and separate the fresh water from the salt. The Bear River Refuge was authorized by Congress to try to overcome the botulism problem in the Bear River Bay. Kalmbach laughed about it then, but it was a very important discovery. They soon isolated the bacteria, Clostridium botulinum, a food poison. Well I was working for research with Cecil Williams who was head of Bear River Research Lab, we travelled. We saw all the refuges in southern Idaho, all of them in Utah, we went to Malheur Refuge in Oregon, and a number of other places. Everything that was within two or three days travel in a “Ford/60” with a 30 hp engine, we went to see. I didn’t have any per diem, but he did, so we’d share his per diem to eat and we’d sleep in sleeping bags out in the field beside the road while we were traveling.
We had a CC Camp at Bear River Refuge in those days and we had a crew assigned to the lab. We would take some of those boys along with us from time to time, to give them a little R&R away from the CC Camp. 4
I was still going to school in 1938 & ’39 and was working with Dr. D.I. Rasmussen, Director of the Wildlife Research Unit at Utah State College. He had been trying to sell the State of Utah on establishing a waterfowl research project under the newly formed Pittman-Robertson section of the Utah Game and Fish Department. The Pittman-Robertson Act had only passed a few years before, but most of the states that got financing under the Pittman-Robertson Act had gone into big game projects. The state of Utah was influenced to set up their first research project on migratory birds. It was the fourth in the United States. I helped draft the project, and subsequently went to work for the State of Utah Fish and Game Department to carry it out, starting in 1940. My job was doing research on the state’s six migratory bird refuges. Some were refuges and some were called areas. They were protected and developed and provided with water. I worked for the State of Utah for four years doing research on waterfowl and various other wildlife on the six waterfowl refuges, culminating in the development of management plans for those areas. After completing management plans for the state areas, I accepted a job with the Fish and Wildlife Service and my first station was Bear River Refuge in Utah. I went to work there on July 1, 1944.
I started out then with federal wildlife refuges at Bear River Refuge in 1944. I was familiar with the refuge because I had been working there part-time in research for a number of years. The duck nesting studies that I had done in previous summers were all turned over to the refuge and used for their records and information.
One thing we did turn up…We did have a pretty terrific predator loss on Bear River Refuge and our year study there in the summer pretty well proved that it was skunks that were doing it. The high river banks within the flooded units were great concentration areas for ducks and skunks. I recall my earlier study there, I found a concentration of 43 duck nests on a quarter of an acre. They were so close you could hardly move among them without stepping on them. Bear River Refuge and the rest of northern Utah was a fantastic nesting area in those days. The high river bank with all the flooded marshes around them were a real concentration for the upland nesting birds, and then of course, the we marshes were full of red heads. It was very rare that you’d find a canvas back. Their outstanding nester was the gadwall. There were a lot of red heads in the Great Basin in those days. I hadn’t been at Bear River Refuge very long when I got a 5
request from Washington to go down to Oklahoma and Texas to Lake Texoma where they were trying to establish two new waterfowl refuges on the Texas and Oklahoma arms of Lake Texoma. So, although I was barely moved in, I lived on the refuge there, and the word came down from Mr. Salyer who at that time I’d never met, here in Washington to pack my bags and plan to go for 2 or 3 months to Oklahoma and Texas. Well, I was quite willing to do that because it was a new experience for me and beside, Mr. Salyer was the Chief of Refuges.
Kevin: Were you married at the time?
Marcus: Yes, I was married.
Kevin: And how did your wife adjust to all of this moving around?
Marcus: I was married and had a baby daughter as a matter of fact, she couldn’t have been more than a year or a year and a half old at that time. Both my wife’s family and my family were nearby and my wife stayed behind with them while I was gone. I was at Tishomingo, Oklahoma and Dennison, Texas for the two proposed refuges. We set up grazing permits and talked with people. We had trouble getting the Tishomingo Refuge. The local state representative didn’t want to let us have it. So we politicked around. For guys that knew as little as I did--I had to rely on the regional supervisor, Kenneth MacDonald. He was the regional supervisor at Albuquerque at that time. My detail to Oklahoma and Texas was a real experience because I had never in that country. I didn’t know how humid it was; I didn’t know about chiggers.
Kevin: Had you never seen chiggers before?
Marcus: I had never seen chiggers and my first experience was a horrendous one. I was staying in a hotel. I had been out in grass, talking to farmers in the vicinity of the proposed Hagerman Refuge out in the Black Lands of North Texas, and I didn’t know they were full of chiggers. I hadn’t believed a little bug like that could give you that 6
much trouble. I came into the hotel that night, took a shower, and went to bed and in the middle of the evening, I started itching. By midnight I was up and covered with welts from my belt down. I thought I was going through something; I thought I had caught a horrible disease. I couldn’t believe it was chiggers. Anyway, be that as it may, I learned about chiggers. I later learned how to live with them some but I never learned how to avoid them completely.
I spent two terms down there. After my first three months, I went back to work on Bear River Refuge and was glad to get back to family, the Bear River Marshes, and away from chiggers.
I had no sooner gotten back home when they called and wanted to go down again. So, I did. This time the Fish and Wildlife Service was trying to actually set up the new refuges, and get things going. But, they were still having difficulties with the local congressman and others on the Tishomingo, Oklahoma side of the lake. We set up grazing permits and talked with farmland owners, and even through the Tishomingo Refuge hadn’t been really processed yet, we proceeded on the basis that it would be. The Hagerman Refuge as okay and nothing was impeding it becoming reality. Finally someone came out form Washington and sat down with the governor and the Corps of Engineers, whose property it was, and rapped out a decision. The decision was that Tishomingo would be a refuge.
Interesting thing on Tishomingo. While we were playing politics, getting data from Washington, and calling and calling the regional office, the politicians where were trying to keep us from having a refuge always knew what we were going to do. It wasn’t until a year or two later that we found out that the woman who operated the telephone exchange was a sister-in-law of the politician who was keeping us out. There was never a phone call went through that office that wasn’t monitored.
I stayed at Bear River Refuge just long enough to get packed and in 1945 in the fall, I was appointed refuge manager at Hagerman Refuge and proceeded to move down there. We carved it out of the woods. It was a conglomerate of small parcels of land that we had to bring into one management system.
The Corps of Engineers established an economic use with the farmers and it fit pretty well with the FWS priorities of that time. 7
We had on that refuge something like 42 individual units, which we permitted former owner were who living in the vicinity to use for farming, grazing, and other things. We fenced and posted the boundary and started building small impoundments above the lake.
We built a service building and an oil house. Two years later we got a little more money and built an equipment building, and several years later, a residence. Of course, the residence was completed after I had moved.
Hagerman Refuge was quite an experience. It was an instant success and a terrific place for snow geese and ducks. I stayed at Hagerman Refuge for six years with some details elsewhere.
In 1950 I was asked by Regional Supervisor George Barclay about going into the Albuquerque Regional Office as his assistant. My only concern was at that time was that I was a bit younger than a lot of the refuges managers that I would be supervising. I went into the regional office in Albuquerque on January 2, 1951 and became regional assistant for George Barclay who had been supervisor for several years there in Albuquerque.
Barclay decided to first acquaint me with the rest of the refuges that I hadn’t seen in the region. He and I took off in our car--in those days you used a government car or train. We had a Pontiac and we would drive all the way to the Lower Valley of Texas. He and I would leave the office together and let our secretary run the office. She would call us or we would call her daily, and she held down the office while we were gone for a week or more at a time until he had shown me completely around the region. In those days, Region 2 had eight southwestern states. We had all the refuges from Jackson, Wyoming to the Texas coast. It took us a while to see them all. In those days things were done mostly by letter so things went along smoothly because you had time to work out problems. That also gave you opportunities to be out of the office once in a while.
So I got acquainted with the rest of the refuges in Region 2. I hadn’t seen many of them up to then. I continued to work with older refuge managers. Most of them were older than I was but we got along fine because they recognized the fact that I had had quite a lot of experience in migratory birds particularly and in wildlife refuges elsewhere. Then, too, I took the position of trying to learn from these well-educated, older refuge managers who had been doing that for quite a while. I didn’t have any problem working 8
from the level of the position I was in with the various other refuge managers around the region. I considered it a learning experience for me.
Things began to grow in responsibility in the region. They overcame the problem of transportation. They cleared people for using airplanes. They cleared the use of the telephone. Things began to hum and immediately the stepped up timing changed. It became necessary , too, for Fish and Wildlife and Refuges to recognize a great deal broader scope of laws and regulations because new things had come into the picture. The Duck Stamp Act had been passed in the ‘30’s; this brought about a lot of new things. This brought about a requirement and a responsibility for refuge selection at regional level. We had to add people for this purpose. With increased regulatory procedures an increased number of people were necessary.
The River Basin Program became very active and we were involved with them. Refuge selection under the Coordination Act became into being. We had to keep adding people because or responsibilities seemed to grow and multiply. The paperwork and the regulatory devices also multiplied. In the ‘50’s and early ‘60’s in the regional office, we used to go out and recruit people from the schools. Later on, this was taken over by administration.
Several of the early wildlife management schools were in our region, including Colorado State, Utah State, and Arizona State. Civil Service examinations were of the unassembled type where a person was graded on basis of experience and education, so we could go out and recruit early. We were pretty successful at getting what we thought were some of the best qualified people.
Kevin: How did that differ from back in the ‘30’s, ‘40’s, and early ‘50’s in the types of people that were recruited? How were things done then and who were the types of employees? What were their backgrounds versus going to universities and actually going into the departments and trying to recruit the kind of people with wildlife backgrounds? Was there a big difference?
Marcus: Do you mean, was it done differently before we started?
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Kevin: Yes, how was it different?
Marcus: A lot of the recruiting was done in the early days by Washington personnel because many of the regions had only small or no regional office supervisory people. This will give you some idea, my supervisor was a graduate engineer form the University of Idaho. J. Clark Salyer’s assistant, Krummes, was a graduate of the University of Idaho of Forestry. So, you’ve got an engineer and a forester who later became--Krummes later became a regional director. The people in reality were either engineers or in many cases foresters. There weren’t wildlife managers with a college degree in those days. What brought this all about was, way back there in the ‘30’s, after the passage of the Duck Stamp Act and after the great waterfowls low of the mid-30’s, attention was given acquiring many lands for migratory birds. “Ding” Darling, the Director, obtained like $10 million to buy land. They grabbed everybody they could find to set up realty teams to go out and buy these lands. A lot of them were people with forestry and engineering degrees because they had to survey land and do a lot of physical ground work. They had to select lands that were okay. They didn’t get very many people in those early cadres who had a wildlife management background because wildlife management was just beginning in the ‘30’s. Dick Griffith who succeeded Bill Krummes as Clark Salyer’s assistant here in Washington is also a forestry major.
Kevin: Is there a point that you can remember when the schools started turning out more people with wildlife backgrounds, specifically in wildlife? Is there a date or a period that you can think of?
Marcus: Well, just about the year I started school. What brought that on, in a way, was some of the early pioneering in wildlife management schooling. Utah State started giving a degree about the same time I started college, probably in 1954.
Colorado State started giving degrees about that time. Arizona was a little bit later coming along. So, we got a lot of people from Utah State and Colorado State in Region 2 because those were the principle produces of early degrees in wildlife management. Also along about 1938 the Civil Service Commission started to require a 10
B.S. degree. Along in the drought years, the bad years of the ‘30’s, I think
Herb Dill
No full textHerb Dill oral history interview as conducted by Kevin Kilcullen. Mr. Dill started with the Biological Survey in 1935 working with CCC’s at Arrowwood NWR. He mentions the various refuges and offices he worked, inventing the cannon net, issues on the various refuges, the name change to the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1939, establishing refuges, changing Mud Lakes name Agassiz, and his family.
Mr. Dill was the inventor of the cannon net.
Organization: FWS
Name: Herb Dill
Years: 1935-1969
Program: Refuges
Keywords: History, Refuges, Military, CCC Program, Some hatchery related work, Waterfowl, Banding, Cannon net, Ira Gabrielson (First Director of USFWS), J. Clark Salyer (Chief of Refuges), Biological Survey, Biography, Biologists (USFWS), Employees (USFWS), Military, Wildlife refuges, Youth, Waterfowl, Bird banding, Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge, Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Swan Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge1
Oral History Cover Sheet
Name: Herb Dill
Date of Interview: March 9, 1988
Location of Interview:
Interviewer: Kevin Kilcullen
Approximate years worked for Fish and Wildlife Service: 34 years (1935-1969)
Offices and Field Stations Worked, Positions Held: Biologist at Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge, CCC Program at Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge; Refuge Manager, Ruby Lake, Nevada; Swan Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Missouri; Manager at Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge, South Dakota and satellite areas in North Dakota; Mud Lake (Agassiz) National Wildlife Refuge, Minnesota; Regional Refuge Biologist, Minneapolis Regional Office.
Most Important Projects: Changing Mud Lake National Wildlife Refuge name to Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge, invention of cannon net; established Tewaukon National Wildlife Refuge
Colleagues and Mentors: Howard Thornsberry, Forest Carpenter, Fran Gillett, Don Gray, Ira Grabrielson, J. Clark Salyer, Bill Green
Most Important Issues: condors; before Dill’s arrival at Mud Lake (Agassiz) farmers blowing up dam; realtors selling land to people that was too boggy and marshy to farm on and they nearly starved to death
Brief Summary of Interview: Mr. Dill started with the Biological Survey in 1935 working with CCC’s at Arrowwood NWR. He mentions the various refuges and offices he worked, inventing the cannon net, issues on the various refuges, the name change to the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1939, establishing refuges, changing Mud Lakes name Agassiz, and his family.
Keywords: history, biography, employee (USFWS), refuges, military, CCC Program, refuges, some hatchery related work, waterfowl, banding, cannon net, Ira Gabrielson (First Director of USFWS), J. Clark Salyer (Chief of Refuges), Biological Survey
2
Biographical Sketch
I was born on October 23, 1912 at Iowa City, Iowa. My parents came from Maine; my father was a professor, Museum of Natural History State University of Iowa from 1906-1958. I graduated from Iowa in 1934 with a B.A. double major: psychology and zoological sciences. I joined the Biological Survey in 1935 as a biologist in the CCC’s at Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge, transferred and promoted to the CCC Program at Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Tule Lake, Ca. March 1936. I was married to Elizabeth Bestick, Detroit Lakes, MN in June 1936. Elizabeth passed away in Jan. 1974. I was married again to Hazel Macey, Arcadia, MO March 1975. I have four children, John, Zoe, Patricia, and Donna; Hazel has two daughters, Rosalind and Teresa.
At Tule Lake, CA in 1938 I took the Civil Service exam for refuge manager, passed and was assigned to Ruby Lake, Nevada; the first manager there. I served at Ruby until June, 1978 with the exception of two years in the Navy. In 1948 I transferred to the Swan Lake NWR, Sumner, MO and was there until June, 1951. I managed the Sand Lake NWR at Columbia, S.D. (and satellite areas in North Dakota) until June 1956. Then I was transferred to Mud Lake NWR (now Agassiz) and worked there until Jan. 1963. Then I was assigned to the Minneapolis Regional Office as Regional Refuge Biologist where I worked with NWR’s throughout the 11 state central area. I also coordinated the research program with the Bureau’s Research Centers at Laurel, MD and Jamestown, N.D.
3
Kevin: To start off, if you could identify yourself, tell me when you started working for Fish and Wildlife Service or whatever agency’s name was at the time, just general information about your career, how long you worked for the Service and when you retired.
Herb: I’m Herbert Dill. I graduate from the State University of Iowa at Iowa City in 1934. I went to work for what was then the Bureau of Biological Survey in September of 1935 in the Civilian Conservation Program as a biologist. I started at Arrowwood, North Dakota, near Kensal and was there a relatively short time. I transferred out to Tule Lake in California.
Then I took the Civil Service Examination and became qualified as a refuge manager and was assigned to Ruby Lake, Nevada in 1938. I functioned as a refuge manager from then until 1963, both in Region 1 and back in Region 3. The last 6 years that I worked--I put in 28 years as a manager--the last 6 years, 1963 till 1969, I was the biologist in a regional office in Minneapolis. I retired in 1969.
Kevin: Could you mention some of the refuges you were at or where you were stationed?
Herb: Of course, I was at Arrowwood, ND; Tule Lake, CA; Ruby Lake, NV; then Swan Lake, Missouri; Sand Lake, SD for 5 years; then I was at Mud Lake, MN, later the name was changed to Agassiz, in fact, I was the guy that changed the name of the refuge. We didn’t care for the name Mud Lake; there were 101 Mud Lakes listed in the state and we decided a more appropriate name would be Louis Agassiz from the original, historical Lake Agassiz. Salyer commented, “Well Dill, at last you have a name that few can pronounce and no one can spell!”
I knew Ira Grabrielson quite well. Of course he was an ornithologist and he came to Ruby Lake and visited with me at the time he was the director; this was in 1939.
4
Later, after I went to the Minneapolis regional office, I had as one of my responsibilities to select about 125 student candidates for summer employment. Many of these students were undergrads but some were working on a master’s thesis. I reviewed their work and made recommendations for their employment. We worked mainly with the Land Grant Colleges located in the Middle West.
Kevin: The system, the way Salyer had his concept as to the way the refuge system was set up, was it very controversial at the time? Did things go smoothly the direction he was taking?
Herb: At my level, no. I always had the feeling that J. Clark was more into the day to day management of any given area that he visited. He’d have some very positive ideas about what we should do. If you differed with him, you could discuss things pro and con and he liked this. I’m sure he liked the fellows to show some spark and not always be in complete agreement with the boss, so to speak. I liked him and worked well with him. He was always a good supporter. I believed in the program, there was no question about that. I thought it was the only thing.
On a program of that type there are some conflicts, of course. A good example would be Agassiz. Most of the land was acquired through the Resettlement Administration. Are you acquainted with that? It was a government program in FDR’s time whereby poor families that were on marginal lands and just couldn’t make a living were bought out and moved to a better location. A lot of the refuge lands were acquired in that way. Some of these people didn’t want to leave. To complete the refuge and round out the boundaries, we had to have the land. Some of these cases wound up in court and of course, there were conflicts, but ultimately the acquisition program was achieved and we had the project going.
You were left with a small group of people that were bitterly opposed to the program and the manager’s job was to somehow reconcile these people to the program and what it stood for. Then, of course, there was the problem of crop depredations. Waterfowl don’t know the boundaries and go over and eat the neighbor’s crops. So you have that to contend with. 5
At Agassiz these were two problems I had to attempt to solve. I can tell you an interesting story about Agassiz. When it was started and one of the main water control systems was put in, a group of farmers got together at night and went down there and dynamited the dam. I wasn’t there at the time, but one of my predecessors tells the story and it is a matter of record. The biologist on the project who was assigned to a CCC camp located there had the courage to go down there at the time this was going on and recorded all the license numbers from the cars. Later he succeeded in getting an injunction against these people. The dam was restored and development continued.
Years later, when I was manger there, maybe 15 years, I was going through the old records and came across a copy of this injunction in which was listed all these folks. Well, I read the names and lo and behold, 4 of them were working for me! They were on the crews. I thought that was interesting. (laughter) Of course, I didn’t mention it to them and they continued to work there. By that time it was water over the dam and everybody was pretty well reconciled as to what had happened.
Agassiz constituted and immense marsh and bog area in northern Minnesota and had been purchased, developed, and sold to people who wanted to farm. They migrated there by railroad, horse and buggy, or anyway they could get there. It constituted a big hoax because it was not land that could be successfully farmed. These people were nearly starving to death at the time the refuge was started. Actually, to my mind anyway, the refuge was a great improvement and it eventually restored a wildlife resource that was historical in that part of the country. Together with the state ownership, we had between 60,000 and 80,000 acres under management.
Kevin: If you could sit back and recall a little bit, in your opinion, if you could pick up two events or landmarks or milestones in the development of the Service or the refuge system in your career, what would two or three of those be? What were the most important changes or milestones that you can recall?
Herb: Well, I suppose that more of the physical development was accomplished with the CCC program than any other program that we had. Many of the road and other facilities were built under that program. Considering the limited resources, a great deal was 6
accomplished with the CCC. I lived in a CCC camp for 2 years, so I was well acquainted with what was going on. All around me I saw where young boys were brought in and got some training and experience that lasted them and had an impact for the rest of their lives. So, the CCC program was a wonderful program at the time. It fit the circumstances and the results were generally good.
Beyond that, of course, the name of the bureau was changed to the Fish and Wildlife Service about 1939. Things gradually progressed to the programs that we know today. As we learned more about the populations we were working with, it was changed to fit their needs. Aside from the CCC program, I can’t single out any other particular thing.
Public acceptance was a big factor. As time went on, the managers learned this and they also learned that these projects had to fit the local community. My principal was to work children. I put great emphasis on working with the schools in the surrounding area. Thus the students became what we were doing and why we were doing it. As a matter of fact, many adopted this approach. In other words, the program became functional as part of the community and part of the natural resources of the community.
Kevin: I’d like to ask you a question about that. Is there a point in time where you can remember where the service became more cognizant about trying to get the public involved and trying to get visitors to come to refuges? Is there a particular period where that is starting to be recognized?
Herb: No, I really can’t. I think that each manager recognized the need for this sort of thing. WE had our get together every two years, we’d have a refuge conference and the fellows would all get together. We knew where the money was coming from. You had to make the thing fit to some degree in the scheme of things with politicians. This is my own opinion but you’d hear some of the guys say, “Dill, how can you afford to fool around with those politicians?” Well when you consider that, in most cases, the local Senator or Congressman sat on one of the committees that dealt with appropriations; I saw a very practical thing there. There was just no way to ignore it. No matter how high minded or how you might consider your program in relation to the resource, if you didn’t 7
have the cooperation and the understanding of those people, you’d never get off the ground with it. I’m sure that is true, and most of the guys recognized this.
Now, when you speak of public relations, there are several elements involved. There was always a lot of pressure for hunting and fishing. Here you often run into direct conflicts with the use of the area by wildlife. In other words, you can to a degree have both public use and maintain the resource, but somewhere along the line it has to mesh with use by wildlife. That had to be worked out. I always personally felt that hunting and fishing should be minimized, that such uses should be subordinated to the principal objectives. While some public use could be accommodated, some could not. For example boating, some cases, as at Ruby Lake, this precedent was established in the 1950’s and has been troublesome ever since.
Kevin: Let’s go back to one thing you were just talking about, the name change in 1961 and I know there was a reorganization in the mid-1950s where the Fish and Wildlife Service actually had two bureaus under it which was Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife and then the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. Do you recall how those reorganizations effected on the ground operations of everyday?
Herb: To some degree. On a refuge where you had a fishery resource it was difficult under the original set up to find knowledgeable people in fisheries to help you with management. As time went by, and the two services were combined, I remember Fred Foster became active in the regional office in Region 1. We had a significant trout and bass fishery at Ruby Lake, and I was involved in fishery management to some degree. This came along about the time when we needed some good technical assistance from fishery people. Yes, when whose two things happened, it was much better.
Ruby Lake was the only refuge I ever had that had a trout fishery and a hatchery. For example, Agassiz there were game fish on the refuge and there were game fish in the river that bordered the refuge. Because public fishing was in conflict with waterfowl production, no fishing was allowed.
8
Kevin: Were you involved in the creation and the development of any refuges, any particular refuges?
Herb: Yes, when I was at Sand Lake, we had some satellite areas, easements, in North Dakota and there was one near Cayuga, North Dakota named Tewaukon. I became acquainted with some of the local people who wanted to do something more with this area, Tewaukon, other than just put signs around it and call it a refuge. They wanted it developed and managed. Here again, there was a fisheries involved, so I helped these fellows to the extent that they organized a sportsman group and requested that land acquisition be done to acquire what was just an easement area. So Tewaukon was established under my administration at Sand Lake. Forest Carpenter was in Minneapolis at the time and he and I worked on establishing Tewaukon.
Kevin: What kind of problems or obstacles did you encounter in trying to set up or creat a refuge?
Herb: Tewaukon was established from the grassroot level. I had learned that there are one or two key people in any community that are the real movers behind such projects. I talked with these people and sold them on what we were doing at Sand Lake, S.D. and invited them down to see it and see how it worked. They knew a local banker who handle real estate and they talked him into going out and buying or taking options, or purchase contracts, on all of these lands that were needed for Tewaukon. Then the whole thing, through him, transferred ownership to the Fish and Wildlife Service. This was accomplished over a period of 10 years. This arrangement worked well. In other cases an individual owner with extensive holdings might wish to cooperate with the Fish and Wildlife Service by selling to the Bureau. In the case of Tewaukon, a leader was needed locally. The president of the conservation club filled that requirement very well.
At Agassiz, I cooperated actively with the state of Minnesota in forming wildlife management areas. These areas were adjacent to the refuge and complemented refuge objectives by providing additional space for wildlife, both waterfowl and big game managed hunting was provided on these areas which were administrated by the state. At 9
most refuges I managed, I was well acquainted with the state conservation departments and worked cooperatively with them. The exception was Ruby Lake. Ruby Lake was a different story all together being highly controversial and political. Over the years every manager that was there had a difficult time. By all reports, it’s still the same way.
Kevin: In recruiting refuge employees, what qualifications did you look for to get people to come to work for you at the various refuges?
Herb: I spoke of the student assistant program, which proved to be an important source of people qualified for refuge employment. After a summers’ employment at a refuge we were able to assess their aptitudes for refuge work. Most of these men and women ultimately attained a master’s degree at the conclusion of their employment one or two years later, they would write a report stating what they thought about the program, and their accomplishments. In many cases valuable research was done. If they were working on a dissertation for their master’s we would assign them to a project that would contribute to the management of the refuge. At the conclusion of their employment they would take the Civil Service Examination and we’d hire them. It was an excellent program in terms of producing people that we could use.
Kevin: Were these with state universities for these particular students?
Herb: Yes, most student employees were hired from the Land Grant Universities such as Michigan State, Iowa State, et cetera, or from other universities which had wildlife management curricula. Following their employment as assistant managers, we had a training school at Arden Hills. These people would be invited to participate in a six week training course in Minneapolis and us refuge folks would serve as instructors. This produced good people, well trained, in terms of what we wanted.
Kevin: Refuge managers. What kind of qualities did you consider for an individual to have in order to be a successful manager?
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Herb: The thing that I always looked for was the ability to communicate. If you couldn’t tell your story so that somebody else could understand it and work with you, you were dead in the water. In other words, you should be able to write acceptable or a report to get across what you wanted to as well as what you are doing. As a refuge manager and line officer in the Bureau, you not only need to communicate with your superiors but you’ve got to be able to make the people on your staff understand what it its you’re talking about. In most cases where there are conflicts, it is lack of communication.
Kevin: A difficult skill to master.
Herb: I agree.
Kevin: You were involved in the development of the cannon net.
Herb: When I reported to Swan Lake, MO, there was a small population of Canada geese visiting the refuge, 10,000 or 12,000 birds. We wanted to learn more about their movements and the dynamics of the population. This is accomplished by banding. Some of the refuge employees had been trying to trap these geese with very little success. They used what they termed a walk-in trap. They would bait them in and trip the lever on a gate that would fall. Unfortunately the geese were smart enough to know what the trap was, and they would not go in, in any numbers.
I looked at it and I thought, “…as long as they will respond to bait…if they’ll come up to bait in a group, there ought to be a way to throw a net over them.” So I started experimenting with this idea. We were short on money, so we salvaged some fish nets with 2 inch mesh, then we made some cannons. We took the drive shaft of a Model A, it’s tubular steel you know, and it happens to be 2 ½ inches in diameter. WE bought some steel shafting 2 ½ inches in diameter and made projectiles. Put a loop on the end of the projectile, tied a rope to that and to the net, and started trying with propellants; we even tried dynamite. The Hercules Powder Company had a representative out there, he told us about propellants that would work a lot better that dynamite. One thing led to another and we finally got to the point where we had about the right combination with 3 11
cannons and the net. Then in 1948 we made our first catch of geese. I wrote the Regional office describing my work with the cannon net. Fran Gillett was there at the time but he thought shooting cannons at geese on a refuge was a bit unorthodox to say the least, but we finally convinced him. Actually, we got to the point where we co
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