You seem to have gone from books to nature, rather than vice versa . . .

I was a city kid. Historically, people who end up in this field were often raised on a farm or from families where there was hunting and fishing. For me, it was kind of the other way around. I was raised in Grand Rapids, MI—not a big city, but certainly an urban area, with mass transit. When I was in high school, I joined the Grand Rapids Audubon Club. That’s where the first mentors that I remember were. They were local people who birdwatched, and who took me under their wing.

How did you get started in research?

I went to a residential high school in upstate New York. During my sophomore year, I found a book in the library called An Introduction to Ornithology written by George Wallace, the ornithologist at Michigan State University. They let me check it out for the summer, and I actually read it all over that summer. My senior year I did a breeding bird census project on the grounds of the school and got those data published. It was really fun.

When I started college at Michigan State, there wasn’t much doubt in my mind that I was going to be a biologist, but I didn’t exactly know what I was going to do. I latched on to different professors, but my curiosity always went towards birds. When I graduated, I had a choice between working with that same professor, George Wallace, or the herpetologist. Southern Michigan is a better place for somebody who studies birds than for somebody who studies salamanders, so I ended up working on birds.

What led you towards your current work?

In 1984, I got a job as the zoologist for the Tennessee Natural Heritage Program maintaining a database of records of rare animals throughout the State. We looked at where these animals might be, the habitat they might use, the kind of environmental features that might indicate where to find them. We were interested in how we could gather those data quickly, and then translate them into useable information for environmental protection. Part of the job was verifying records. I have a predilection for survey work, and I got involved in cooperative projects with other agencies doing what we called natural area surveys, looking in different parts of the State to identify areas valuable for rare species protection that we didn’t already recognize or about which we could improve our knowledge.

How did you get into cerulean warbler research with the Forest Service?

In February 1993, Winston Smith hired me to work for the Forest Service at the same place where I am right now—Stoneville, MS. The cerulean warbler project was already in existence before the job came open, and I had been cooperating on it while I was in Tennessee. I had encountered cerulean warblers, in small numbers, in the surveys we did in both middle and west Tennessee. Two people involved in a conference in 1989 in Massachusetts on migratory birds, Chan Robbins and John Fitzpatrick, had started writing a paper on cerulean warbler because they recognized that the birds were in trouble, and that we didn’t know very much about them. I had some data from our work in Tennessee that I could add, so we wrote a paper that was published in 1992.

What inspires you about the research you do?

I don’t know, except that it’s really fascinating. What immediately popped into my mind when you asked the question is that it seems like Murphy (of Murphy’s law) is in charge. In any extended field project, what we thought we understood at the end of the last iteration of activity in some respect no longer applies in the next one. It’s fascinating to keep going, and try to understand what may have been underneath the change in perception that occurred. What was it that led to the assumption I had last time that now needs to be changed in light of what I have just observed? In some situations, it just takes time to amass enough information to be able credibly to address questions that may seem so obvious in the early stages that they don’t get evaluated carefully.

Can you give me an example?

When I was in Tennessee, I assumed that cerulean warblers had to be in woods that were pristine and untouched, so old-growth forest would be the best place to look for them. And because I believed that to be the case, I was convinced that any sort of forest management would have a negative effect on their environment. That’s just wrong. I didn’t have enough experience, and I didn’t know enough about silviculture. It’s been a rich education to be the wildlife biologist in a silviculture unit, where I’m surrounded by people who understand the biology and economics of trees—and to learn things that as a city boy and as an environmental protection specialist I missed out on in terms of the dynamics of forests. Through working with some very smart people in different areas of expertise, I’ve realized that it’s just not true that forest management is bad for cerulean warblers, and in fact, forest management has an important role to play in maintaining habitat on the landscape.

What is that role and how does it play out?

It’s really about the interaction between silviculturists and bird biologists. What silviculturists bring is a knowledge of forest growth patterns and ability to manipulate stands of trees from a current condition in terms of species composition and vegetation structure to a more desirable condition that meets specific management objectives, for example, habitat for cerulean warbler. What the bird and salamander people and those interested in other inhabitants of the forest bring is information about how to specify what that desired condition is. Once it’s defined, there’s the opportunity to work with the silviculturist to devise ways to groom the forest from the current condition to the desired condition. Now, because those of us who are interested in birds have learned something about silviculture, we can have that interaction. I think it’s been beneficial in both directions. The role of forest management with respect to cerulean warbler is to maintain the diverse physical vegetation structure that is preferred by the birds.

What’s your favorite project?

Whatever I’m doing today ends up being my favorite project. It really is true: I’m fascinated by the work on small mammals while we’re doing that, and I’m fascinated by the work on winter bird populations while we’re doing that. I’m equally fascinated by the work on rusty blackbirds, cerulean warbler, and on pondberry. It’s all good.

What gives you hope?

Two things: One is the interactions possible among diverse groups of people. The Cerulean Warbler Technical Group is an absolutely wonderful example of people working together, with interaction from forest industry, from nongovernmental organizations, from the coal mining industry, from numerous State and Federal agencies, and from universities in North America and South America. That’s really hopeful.

The other is the really intense and high-quality interest of Latin Americans in bird study. I see the quality of the science that’s being done by colleagues across South America. There are wonderful scientists, young scientists, in these countries, and that’s exciting as we watch human population go up and the proportion of landscape in forest go down. It’s not an entirely hopeless situation. There is a future.