KW Recovery Team members wear many hats

 
By JERRY NUNN

The Kirtland’s Warbler recovery team, like the habitat it seeks to manage, could itself be a study in diversity. Drawing on the skills and knowledge of many, the team is made up of people from several federal and state agencies.

While all these organizations devote many hours of time and many shared resources to the study and management of the warbler, to all the people involved, the songbird is but a tiny piece of their daily jobs.

One of those people is Phil Huber; the U. S. Forest Service authority on the Kirtland’s Warbler and a member of the warbler recovery team since 1991.

While the bird can keep him busy, it is only a small part of many jobs he conducts at the Mio Ranger’s office. Huber also works as his district’s assistant ranger and forestry manager, along with doing wildlife biology, environmental analysis and assessment.

One of Huber’s favorite jobs gives him the opportunity to travel – each summer since 1985 he has spent time out west, fighting forest fires.

“Nearly everyone involved with this organization is expected to help with fire-fighting in one way or the other. There’s a lot of activity,” said Huber, who last year worked as a dispatcher in Missoula, Montana. “I was dispatching smoke jumpers to fires, engines crews and retardant aircraft to different fires, it’s very exciting. You’ll have a lightening storm go through in the afternoon and there may be as many as 50 fires from that one storm.”

Misguided but well meaning environmental practices of the past cause problems today in the west, which experiences a phenomenon known as dry lightening, severe electrical storms that contain no rain. The combination can be devastating, according to Huber.

“That country out there is born to burn,” said Huber. “We’ve been suppressing fire for a long time. There are many dead fuels. Now the Forest Service is beginning to look in the opposite direction, to start doing more burning in the landscape so that we don’t have these explosive fires.”

The uninformed environmental approach was not limited to the west, however. According to Huber, it is no different here and even though the results are not the same, today they are trying to reverse the effects of these early efforts.

“From what we know, this country is more forested now than it’s ever been. When this area was first settled in the 1860’s, we think it was fairly open,” said Huber. “The pine ecosystems were a mix of standing timber and large openings and a whole host of species would have used those openings.”

“In the 1930’s, when the Civilian Conversation Corps. worked in this area, they were attempting to reforest the state after logging of the late 1800’s and very early 1900’s. They did a little too good of a job and planted over areas that were native prairie and grassland openings,” said Huber.

Much of the habitat management performed by the forest service is not directed at the warbler, even though the bird often finds a direct benefit. Much warbler habitat is created as a means of fire prevention. Habitat management for other species such as grouse, deer and other species also have far reaching benefits and the also focus of environmental control.

A current move within the Forest Service is to return the area to its original habitat of old growth forests and open prairie, the way it was before the logging industry changed the environmental make-up of the state.

That takes teamwork, Huber said.

Before an area is managed, it undergoes an intense environmental assessment. Experts from a variety of fields such as botanists, biologists, entomologists and foresters perform a broad analysis before any work is begun. As a way of sharing resources, agency employees often cover several districts, with some, such as Huber and the warbler, specializing in a certain species or holding another area of expertise.