Research professor in the UT School of Natural Resources drives decades of impactful work in natural resource management and conservation at the Ames AgResearch and Education Center
Where are you from, and how did your career lead you to UTIA?
I was raised in Brevard, North Carolina, a mountain town that provided just about everything needed to make a youngster love the out-of-doors. I attended my hometown’s Brevard College to earn an associate’s degree before transferring to North Carolina State University where I received two bachelor’s degrees, one in forestry and another in wildlife management. I then attained a master’s degree in forest management with a minor in wildlife biology.
I was hired at Ames AgResearch and Education Center in 1978 as a research assistant and brought my beautiful wife to West Tennessee, wondering all the time how a girl from a small Maryland town called Washington D.C. would adjust to country life. After being at the Ames Center for several years, I was surprised to discover I not only needed – but deeply wanted – a PhD. With support from UT and the Trustees of the Ames Foundation, I completed my PhD in ecology and attained assistant research professor status in 1991.
What is your role within UTIA, and what do you do on a typical day?
I work within something of a unique atmosphere. The Ames Center is more than 10,000 acres and is owned and operated by the Trustees of the Hobart Ames Foundation. In my position as a UT School of Natural Resources faculty member, I work closely within the objectives of the Foundation to identify natural resource issues and develop solutions.
The notion of a “typical day” brings a wry smile because there is no such thing as a typical day. However, a successful day for me is to be in the presence of those with expertise beyond my own, in disciplines outside my own, with experience deeper than my own, all of this focused on significant natural resource questions.
What is one of your favorite experiences you have had while working at the Ames AgResearch and Education Center?
My favorite experiences come in a threefold mix. First, is being able to roam around in the grand beauty of the outdoors; second, is the constant variety in the work, no two days are alike, largely associated with having the acreage, sites, landforms and habitats to address an array of natural resource issues; and third, is the sense of this all being relevant, of being in a place and doing things that actually matter, of making an impression in students’ minds, making contributions to science, and making management decisions that can keep Ames and its programs going.
How has your understanding and appreciation of the natural world evolved throughout your career?
My understanding has evolved as it would with anyone who has spent a career in natural resources. It spans my arrival with a well-grounded, but largely one-dimensional collegiate understanding, to the scholarly curmudgeon’s amassment of reading and listening and doing research and actually making land/forest/wildlife management decisions, all the while being around long enough to observe the long-term results.
The short of it is this: the human race needs contact with natural resources, needs to start young, and needs to cherish it based on the hands-on experience of seeing not just its beauty, but its direct contributions to our livelihood.
What is something about your field that everyone should know?
My PhD is centered in ecology, and while I guess my first love is based in forestry, my interests and research experiences are a smorgasbord of projects, ranging from beaver, quail, deer, chronic wasting disease, Cooper’s hawks, small mammals, mesopredators, ticks, tick-borne diseases, cottonmouth snakes, environmental impacts of short rotation woody crops for energy production, effects of mycotoxins on wildlife, silvicultural treatments of hardwoods, and more. The Ames Center has provided a rather large canvas to paint a picture of whatever it is that “my field” might be.
This is to say that as our footprint on the world increases, we will need to come to a continually better awareness that we are standing on our own home. We owe the economies of our wellbeing to the underpinning of the natural realm’s bounty and much of our spirit’s soaring to its beauty. That natural realm can perish or flourish; but either way will be with the push or pull of our weight and the application of our understanding and wisdom as we ride along with it.
Why is natural resource conservation important to our planet and to future generations?
Natural resources are limited. In forestry, for example, if we can improve productivity, either by timber production or enhancing health or making sure a living resource can reproduce itself, we can broaden those limits and make the resource more durable. There is an old maxim that we do not inherit forests from our fathers so much as borrow them from our children.
The importance of natural resource conservation is so multifaceted it ranges from the dollar’s realities to the vista’s awe. If those things are important now, they will be important in some future “then.”
What are some #RealLifeSolutions you have discovered through your research that can help improve the lives of Tennesseans and beyond?
Three well-documented things are happening in the Eastern Hardwood Forest: they are getting older, quality is spiraling down, and they are failing to regenerate. Our work at the Ames Center, along with Dr. Scott Schlarbaum, is plowing new ground in understanding how to manage hardwood forests.
We have developed hardwood seed orchards with multiple species, with each one represented by multiple genetic lines or families. Our initial thoughts, and traditional science, said our planted trees had no chance.
But many did grow, bringing with them all of their financial, environmental, and wildlife values. In fact, their success, especially the highly prized cherrybark red oak, was rather amazing.
In all, we have more than 25,000 trees in these projects.
As you near retirement, what is your message to UTIA and to the countless others you have impacted during your career?
My message to students would be: “there is never a time in your career when you cannot switch to another gear and make it count.” And to my colleagues: “somewhere, someplace you also got that leg up; pass it on.”
I have often told students how to judge a job. My criteria have changed through the years as my perceptions matured; but now at the end of my career, I discover it boils down to one single thing: “If I could spend life again, would I be happy to do this same thing again?”
As I think back, yes, I would do this again.
