A: I grew up in Fairborn, and started at Five Rivers MetroParks as an intern in 1981. I was hired to do a research project to count birds of prey and their impact on other wildlife in the parks. So I was out looking for hawks, owls and other raptors, and it ended up becoming a real interest for me. I went to grad school to actually study birds of prey and their effects; I focused on one particular bird, the American Kestrel. There were a lot more of them here, back then. I started full time at Five Rivers in August 1985, so it's been 30-plus years.
Q: Sure does fly by, doesn’t it?
A: I know — how'd that happen? I can't believe they paid me to do it all these years. There aren't that many people, I guess, who get to do what they like to do, and are entrusted to do it.
Q: I’m mindful of your interest in raptors. We’ve got a couple of teenage hawks on our suburban cul-de-sac who are gobbling up the songbirds.
A: They're probably Cooper's hawks — they're now our most common raptor in this area. DDT nearly wiped them out decades ago, and then boom! They came roaring back in big numbers, and have moved into the suburbs. They're one of our big wildlife success stories.
Q: So, talk about your job. What were your responsibilities, as director of conservation?
A: I've been responsible for land acquisition and management of natural areas. I started off just doing habitat management, with the title of land stewardship specialist. But it was a brand new concept in parks that when you buy land, you don't just do nothing with it — you actually manage it for a variety of wildlife, for a variety of experiences for people who visit the park. It took a while to get acceptance with the staff that this was a legitimate thing to do, but it's become part of the agency culture and mission increasingly as the years went by, and it's pretty well ingrained now. Anyway, the fellow who did land acquisition retired, and I had an interest in that — sort of a self-appointed Lorax, I guess. I did have, still do, an eye for good natural areas. I didn't know anything about buying land, but we just went at it. This was in 1992, and I've been doing it ever since.
Q: What was your first acquisition?
A: It was a piece of land at Germantown MetroPark, adjacent to the park. It was a fine piece of woods we now call the Bob Siebenthaler Natural Area. About 14 acres, very high diversity, very old timber on it, a steep ravine with springs, lots of rare plants. There aren't very many woodlands like that unprotected, especially right next to the park. So that was a good one to get.
Q: Then what?
A: Of course, the real change to our purchases came in 1994, when we decided to expand along the river corridors. Prior to that, we were mostly a surburban park system of eight parks — Englewood, Taylorsville, Carriage Hill, Possum Creek, Cox Arboretum, Huffman, Germantown and Sugar Creek. It was the vision of our director at that time, Marvin Olinsky, to connect them all along the rivers.
Q: So, that became the main strategy for which land the system tried to acquire?
A: It did as time went on. Over time, too, we became better funded so that we've been able to hire more people to take care of the land we already have — it's grown over the years to a staff of 14 doing habitat management. Our two terrific conservation managers, Mary Klunk and Mike Enright, run the habitat management, and my main job is to keep them going and supplied at the administrative level.
Q: What other considerations go into deciding which land to add to the system?
A: Land that's adjacent to the existing parks is a big factor, to increase the size of the parks and protect them. We've also put together 14 of what we call "conservation areas," which are basically undeveloped park land — protected from development but maybe not open to the public yet. They go from the smallest, which is Sand Ridge Prairie, a five-acre relic prairie in Moraine that you can actually see from I-75, not far from Hills & Dales MetroPark, to the biggest, the Upper Twin Conservation Area, northwest of Germantown MetroPark. That's some of the wildest land in the county, some old woods, nice and quiet. There's a case where some of it is land that Five Rivers owns, and some of it is privately owned, but under conservation easement so that it is legally protected forever from development.
Q: I’m guessing most people don’t know about these, if they aren’t public.
A: That varies. There's the Shiloh Woods Conservation Area up along the Stillwater River, between Englewood and Wegerzyn Gardens, which is really nice but which hardly anyone knows about. But then there's the Medlar Conservation Area, near Springboro, and we recently put a nice bike trail through there, so a lot more people know about it.
Q: What does the future look like?
A: The agency is going through a master-planning process now, so perhaps it will come up with a plan for public access to more of these areas. There has been a lot of money available to us to buy land in recent years, from the Clean Ohio fund and the Environmental Protection Agency — significant grants for acquisition, but not for facilities and staff. So we've been able to acquire this land, some of the best that is left, I think, but that doesn't mean we have the funding to follow up and manage it.
Q: What are the pros and cons of opening up a piece of land to visitors, as opposed to keeping it closed and preserved?
A: All the usual ones. The con of people is that they always have an impact on the land. But personally, I think the pros outweigh that — people can only protect things they know and care about. If they can't go and see it, they won't know or care about it. Really, it's a balance of finding the best way to use the land. When you put in simple trails and a parking lot, you're letting people in with almost no footprint on the last. You get a lot of bang for your buck on that sort of use.
Q: Timing on the master plan? Why now?
A: Well, the agency really has never done a system-wide master plan. It's been done sort of piecemeal over the years — this is the initiative by our director, Becky Benna, to create the next vision for the MetroParks. We have a levy coming up on the ballot in a few years, and you have to know what to ask for and how you expect to use it if you're going to go to the voters who approve our funding, which is where we get most of our money. You've got to have a plan.
Q: Is land acquisition likely to remain a big part of the plan?
A: We'll see. You could make a case for catching up with and learning to take the best care of what we already have for a while — but the grant money is still there for us to use to buy and protect land. And if there's good land available to us, you hate to leave it on the table. But you do have to administer the things you buy and take care of them. I've got full confidence in the staff, the board and the director to make the right decisions going into the future.
Q: You mentioned earlier how the system has changed since you arrived, connecting the different MetroParks along the river corridors. How would you describe it today?
A: Well, it's certainly much more complex today. And I'm biased, of course, but I think it's one of the finest park systems in the Midwest, if not the country — one that protects our finest ecological areas in a sound way, using scientific principles in how they're managed, but goes beyond that to serve the people, with outstanding outdoor-recreation programs to connect people to nature. Because natural areas without people using them won't fulfill our mission of involving people in the long-term protection of the land. But also, we are involved in protecting and managing a lot of urban land — Island Park, Deeds Point, RiverScape and more — so that we help bring people downtown to connect with nature in a more progressive way. Those urban parks are a great entry point to nature for a lot of people who maybe don't want to go for a hike in Germantown, but will picnic at RiverScape — and maybe that's the way they catch the nature bug. But altogether, that makes us a really strong system.
Q: Creating RiverScape was a big change, wasn’t it?
A: In-house, it was a little controversial when it was proposed, because it was so different from everything else we were doing. I've got to give Marvin Olinsky credit for the vision on that one — he envisioned it becoming Dayton's front porch, if you will, drawing people back to the river. He also saw it could start the renewal of downtown — and I don't know if you can say RiverScape was entirely responsible, but a lot of the good things that came to downtown after that — all the building, people moving down here — followed RiverScape. It was the snowball that started rolling downhill and kept on rolling. Marvin used to say we shouldn't just be preserving wild areas — we should also be preserving the center city, so that people won't sprawl into the wild areas in the first place. I think time has proven him right. Of course, a facility like RiverScape takes a lot more resources to run than even a large natural-area park like Germantown. Even though it's tiny, it takes a lot of equipment and resources, and you have to keep that in mind when you open a place like it. But it has become a pretty important part of our community. It's kind of hard to imagine Dayton now without it.
Q: Have you seen attitudes about nature and conservation change over the years?
A: Sure, a lot. In-house, when Five Rivers was started in the 1960s, you acquired land and had staff to do basic work to keep the parks going. People didn't think at the time about managing the ecology. The environmental movement in the 1970s changed that — and our deputy director back then, Dane Mutter, evolved our thinking to be aimed toward active land and habitat management, and that became our policy and focus. Among the general public, I've seen an improvement in the overall awareness and appreciation of the environment, a concern about wildlife. Also, if you look at the improvement in the amount and variety of wildlife we have now, that's huge — we've deer, geese, otters, bobcats, beavers, turkeys — a real rebound in wildlife. But I think a thing that has gone the way is the increasing amount of time kids spend indoors. That's a concern. What does the future hold for the outdoors if kids aren't out in nature appreciating it?
Q: Have you seen any affects in the parks you would attribute to climate change?
A: I couldn't say for sure. I have many times thought I've noticed changes in bloom times in plants, or migration dates of birds, things like that. But it's subtle. What is much more noticeable to me is the enormous impact of invasive species, mostly aggressive plants that choke out everything else, which is not at all subtle. That's had an immense impact on every park and all our natural lands. Just the impact of the emerald ash borer shows you how one species can affect everything. Probably the worst plant invasive is the Callery pear, which originated in China. It's also known as the Bradford pear — it was planted in subdivisions as landscaping, and was promoted as not reproducing and becoming a problem. But it did, and it's invaded natural lands at an amazing rate. It's the new honeysuckle. These are the issues we have to deal with — we try not to preserve the world as it used to be, but to preserve the diversity of life, and some of these invaders make that really hard.
Q: What have you enjoyed most about the job?
A: Buying the land has been really fun. Talking to landowners, because everyone has a different story, and they're all interesting. I've enjoyed that. I'll miss the people here. The Five Rivers staff is outstanding. Everyone is dedicated to the mission, and passionate.
Q: What does the future of the system look like — say, in 30 years?
A: Wow. Well, I hope it will be at least as good as it is now. Very well run. I can't say enough about the current and the past directors I've worked with. There's a tradition of excellence here, I think. Not say we haven't had some bumps or disagreements over the years, but I think in retrospect, I've been part of a very well run part of local government.
Q: What’s next for you?
A: I don't know. Everyone keeps asking me that. I guess I've been caring for all these pieces of important land for years, which is a big responsibility — like carrying 200 pounds of rocks on your back. I think I'll just put that down for a while and see what bubbles up.
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