No, I'm not going to tell you my life story here, but I would like to tell you a little bit about how I started in wildlife work, and how things were, then. I think it explains a lot about what has happened - and is still happening - with the conservation of our Nation's natural resources.
In the 50s, I was a city kid. I was lucky to have some country nearby, vast regional parks that the cities on the east side of San Francisco Bay had been fore-sighted enough to set aside, and I used them extensively for two of my three favorite pastimes, hiking and bird-watching. [The third favorite was reading.] But I didn't know anything about farming, or forestry, or marsh management; I didn't hunt; and I only fished a little, because my Dad did. My goal in life was "to work with birds," but I hadn't a clue how you did that. My father was a machinist, and most of the adults I knew [other than school teachers] were carpenters, house painters, mechanics, and miscellaneous "businessmen."
My brother, who was six years or so older than me, was also interested in birds and hiking, and he met two people who had a great effect on both our lives. One was a "game warden", who worked for the State of California. The other was a "naturalist", who ran a little wildlife hospital and mini-zoo, and talked to people about the thousands of ducks that came to Oakland's Lake Merritt every winter. What these people did still didn't match that nebulous something that I wanted to do, but it did show my brother and me that there were outdoor occupations.
Upon graduation from high school, and with some guidance from the game warden, my brother got a seasonal job with the California Department of Fish and Game. Part of the year, he traveled up and down California with a "banding crew", trapping ducks and putting numbered leg rings on them so that their movements and longevity could be determined. The rest of his work time, he spent on a State wildlife area, where he worked mainly as a farmer and water manager, providing food and resting space for all those ducks, geese and swans that spent the winter in the California valleys. Sometimes he worked on a State hunting area, checking duck hunters in and out and recording what they shot.
By the time I was nearing graduation, my brother had learned enough about the "wildlife field" to give me some advice. He said that the best way to work with birds was to go to college, and that there were really only two options: Lassen Junior College, which offered a two-year degree in "forestry"; and Humboldt State College, where you went four years and got a Bachelor of Science degree in "game management." I tentatively decided to do one of those. (What my brother didn't know about -- and had he known, it might have changed my whole professional life -- is that you could "work with birds" by pursuing an academic career in ornithology, and not necessarily become involved in "natural resources management" at all.)
One more thing happened to me in my high school years that had a lot to do with how my interests in conservation and natural resources management developed. I discovered backpacking and mountain climbing, and with those pursuits I discovered the still pretty much unspoiled wilderness where you did such things. But I saw the hordes of people in Yosemite Valley, and saw the National Park Service -- under the slogan "Mission 66" -- replacing twisty little forest roads with high standard highways. Some time in high school, I wrote an essay on how crowded the national parks were becoming. [Remember, this was in the mid-50s!]
In 1957, I enrolled in "Game Management" at Humboldt State College, and my education began - in more ways than one. I found out I was one of the few "city kids" in the program; the majority were from farm communities or at least small towns. It was essentially an all-male community. [There were three women in the Game Department while I was there; one was married to a "wildlifer" and liked to hunt, so she was okay; we were sure the other two were just looking for husbands!] The only real "bird watchers" that I met in all my years there were two of my professors [only one of them in the Game Management Department]; virtually every student and teacher in the department hunted and/or fished. I found quite a few hikers, but almost all of them were outside the wildlife and forestry departments. I liked to read and write; I found one other "wildlifer" who had similar interests; when he graduated, he turned over to me the writing of a weekly "outdoors" column in the school newspaper. About the only thing I shared in common with the others in my chosen field was that we all wanted to "work outdoors."
The training at Humboldt was also a surprise to me. There were three "natural resources" options at the time: forestry, fisheries management, and game management. The forestry curriculum was strongly industrial; students got a little botany, but virtually no biology. Fisheries was also strongly geared to commercial and recreational species. Game management was what it said: courses on management of waterfowl, management of big game, management of small game, etc. There was a lot of botany and general biology, and there was one course each in ecology and "range management". There was no crossover to the Forestry Department, and there were no courses in any of the three study options about parks, endangered species, songbirds, or on being a "naturalist" [that still nebulous career that I had seen at Lake Merritt and to some extent in the national parks].
[I should also say here that there were none of those kinds of courses in the Biology Department, either, and that none of those studying the biological sciences were required to take any "management" courses.]
I enjoyed my college years, and I learned a lot. I can't say I really missed not having "conservation" courses - as far as I knew, nobody else taught them, either. Looking to the future, we junior and senior "wildlifers" had had enough summer experience by then to know that the curriculum was short on "conservation administration" [we had one 3-unit course on everything you needed to know about federal and state land administration!]. Still, we figured to learn that "on the job", when we really needed it.
As college had been a revelation, so was the beginning of my professional life. I found that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the various state game departments hired almost exclusively from Humboldt State or schools just like Humboldt [Oregon State College, Montana State College, Utah State College, and a few others at that time]. The U. S. Forest Service hired only foresters [even though they were the first agency to set aside "wilderness areas"]. The National Park Service hired mostly forestry-trained people; their "naturalists" were mostly school teachers working for the Park Service on a seasonal basis. The U. S. Bureau of Land Management was just attempting a transition from the old Grazing Service to a natural resource agency, and were beginning to hire a few Humboldt-type "wildlifers". Most "wildlifers" went with a state game department or the Fish and Wildlife Service.
In the 1960s, the work of the state game departments was clearly defined: they managed those species of fish and wildlife that could be hunted or caught on a fishing line. Almost no money came to the state game departments from the general treasuries of their states; their work was paid for almost completely by license fees, and by the taxes derived from selling hunting and fishing supplies. If other species benefited from the management done for huntable and fishable species, it was a "plus", but there was no mandate and little allegiance to "non game".
You might think that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service would have different objectives than did the states, particularly since the first national wildlife refuges [established soon after the turn of the century] had been set aside to preserve herons, pelicans, seabirds, and other "non game" species. But those early days were more symbolic than anything, and the Service [then known as the Bureau of Biological Survey] had almost no staff assigned to these refuges. It wasn't until the 1930s, when major wetland drainage and a continent-wide drought conspired together to put a major dent in the waterfowl populations of North America, that the National Wildlife Refuge System really got its start. When it did, it was for ducks and geese, not for rails, ibises, and egrets. And when these new refuges were bought, they were developed and managed by "farm boys" - the only folks around who knew how to manage water and grow crops on the land, and the ones who had grown up as hunters and anglers. This first group of land managers set the tone for the future of the National Wildlife Refuge System. The colleges assured that the first "professionals" in wildlife management would be from the same mold. [To be continued.]