David Janes oral history transcript

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National Heritage Team of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Oral History Program
Subject/USFW Retiree: Dave Janes
Date: June 18, 2002
Interviewed by: Dorothe Norton
Dorothe Norton:
Well it's sure nice to be down here in Lake City this afternoon. You have a beautiful home and wonderful, wonderful gardens; thanks for the tour.
Dave Janes:
You're welcome.
Dorothe Norton:
Thank you for allowing me now to interview. And when we get through with the interview I'll have you sign a consent form that it can go into the archives, and we're happy to have you cooperate. Any questions you don't want to answer you can just say you can't answer that and that will be fine. Okay.
Dave Janes:
Okay.
Dorothe Norton:
Okay, we're going to start Dave with you telling me where you were born and the date and your parent's names.
Dave Janes:
Okay, I was born and raised in western New York State, a little town called Attica. You've heard a lot of it now because of the prison riots there, but it's just a small town area in the foothills of the Allegheny's. I was born as a New Year's baby, January 1st, 1940, so I wasn't quite a product of the '30's. My mother and dad, Vernon Janes and Ellen Vagner Janes were from that area. They had been raised there, my dad as a child of 3 or 4 when he came to New York State from Wisconsin and my mother was probably third generation living in the Attica area. And she was of German background, so we kind of had a boisterous German family and a more reserved English family on my dad's side.
I spent a lot of time in the early years living with my grandparents. Both mother and dad worked, my dad was also a musician. And we followed our grandfather around I guess quite a bit. And he was an avid hunter, fisherman, conservationist. And some of the first things I recall of conservations projects, I go back now and look, at about the age of 11 or 12 we helped one of my grandfather's friends restore a marshland and put a 4-acre pond in and also do a series of plantings in there. We planted about 1,500 pine trees, which are now 80 to 90 foot tall, an excellent stand.
And those are types of things that we had as kind of our growing up period. My grandfather was a gardener, as were my mom and dad, but again they were both working 2
and so that was more of a weekend activity for them. My dad also loved to fish, so we would get out and fish every possible moment.
Some of the early recollections were spending time at some of the local ponds fishing for bullhead, brown bullhead. And we would go out there late in the evening and fish until dark, and then we would light a large bonfire so that we keep the mosquitoes off. We'd spend our time then alternately watching bobbers and sleeping curled up around the fire. So it was very I guess laid-back, relaxed, small town type of life. And then also we spent a lot of time hunting everything from rabbit, other small game, and then also we had a number of coon dogs so we'd go coon hunting.
Went to an elementary school, a Catholic parochial school. Of course one of the mandates of being in parochial school was that you did spent your time as an alter boy, and so I did that up until the time I was in high school. I graduated from Attica Central High School as very average; I was exactly in the middle of my class!
Dorothe Norton:
What year?
Dave Janes:
I graduated in 1957; I was kind of an early start in school, so I was just barely 17 when I graduated. And during high school I was in most of the music activities, band and chorus and octets and groups like that. I was a trumpet player and also a base player, a tuba player as you would.
So I spent a lot of fun time just playing music. And then I played the base, my brother was a saxophonist, and the neighbor kids were clarinet. And we had little combos I guess, and mostly just as we would call then dance music, today I guess it would be "golden oldies!"
But anyway, we had those types of activities. And like I said, the rest of the time we were outdoors. We were very much foragers in our family, and I say that in a sense that what we got in terms in resource, whether it be hunting and fishing for game or fish, it went into the pot. If nobody's ever had a young woodchuck as a meal it's excellent as is muskrat!
Dorothe Norton:
I don't know if I agree with that.
Dave Janes:
We've eaten coon, we put trout lines out for snapping turtles and we would get snapping turtles. And my grandpa had a rain barrel we would go ahead put the snapping turtles into the rain barrel until they as he called it "flushed out," and got a lot of that muddiness out them and then we would butcher them, and sawed off the skin and actually dressed them out and grind up the turtle meat, either for turtle stew or you know just...
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Dorothe Norton:
Is it good?
Dave Janes:
It's excellent, yeah, excellent, excellent.
And then the different plants, we'd... In the springtime you'd go out and get the cowslips or marsh marigolds for your greens, cooking up as good as or better than spinach I think. And there was always a lot of plants out in the woods, wild leeks, you know, other, crick onions we called them, all kinds of berries and fruits.
And my grandfather was also an apiarist, so he had about 30 swarms of bees. And so we learned early on {clock gong in background -- I'll wait until the clock quits here!}. We learned early on to work with honeybees and so we had a small lot with a honey house and worked with the swarms. We'd go around town after we got the honey off and sell it by the pound square comb, at that time we'd sell it for 50-cents a comb.
So we were always you might say foraging and hustling, there was not a whole lot of dollars and so that was where we made our money. Then we also sold off Christmas trees. We trapped every winter, so I got muskrat and coon, mink and we would skin those out and have them hanging in the basement usually to cure out. We usually sold our skins dry. A lot of people today I think sell them wet, put them in the freezer, you know sell them wet. We always stretched ours. So there was always in the wintertime a kind of a fatty smell when you went down to the basement.
So there's just a whole lot of things we did as kids. It kind of led us, particularly me, towards being very interested in the outdoors as a resource, and of course ultimately as a vocation.
I started college after about 3 years at home, well actually 2 years I guess after I graduated from high school. I worked in a lumber mill and in a log yard, drove a forklift, worked out in the woods swamping logs. And anybody who's not familiar with the term "swamping," you took the cable and the chokers or chain and threw them over your shoulder and dragged cable out to the logs and hooked it up and let the winch operator snatch them back, you know the log back. So one of the consequences of course to have arthritis in my shoulders today! But it was a lot of manual labor, and then at the same time again it was an economic thing, I was making $1.10 an hour doing this, a good wage you know.
And I started... At the same time, prior to going to the university, I started working in a drug store after school while I was in high school and then worked in the mills during the day. And my boss at the drug store made me an offer that I thought was excellent, he said he would help pay my tuition to University of Buffalo if I majored in pharmacy and if I came back at the end of 5 years he would give me option to buy the store. And so it was kind of one those package deals that I had a career sitting in front of me if I went to college. 4
So I took him up on it and started in '59 at the University of Buffalo majoring in pharmacy and spent almost a year and a half. The economics at home were such that I just could not afford to go any longer, even with my boss helping pay tuition. And so I had to drop out, I had a job offer back at the mill.
And so in December of I think '59 I went back to work at the mill firing boiler for the winter. And because it was all lumber and timber-based, they would trim off the ends of the logs and the butt end of the log was what they fired the boiler with, but of course you had to get it reduced down to door size. And that's where I spent my winter was in short sleeves out in the back lot with a pair of splitting mauls and wedges and splitting out lumber, or wood for the boiler. So that put me in very good shape.
And then in the fall of the next year then I was of course registered for the draft. And at that time in a young man's life if you did not have a deferment for college or farm or something else you were going to go in. And they sent me my notice since I wasn't going to school at that point, and I reported. I was supposed to report for Army, I took my tests and got good scores on the tests and the Air Force grabbed me, or offered me a chance to enlist and so I enlisted in the Air Force in January of '62, and went through basic training down in Lackland. I was going to work in electronics I had hoped, but it turned out that I was selected because of scores and background, I had almost 2 years of college. They selected me for at that time a secret program and all they would tell me is that were going to be having me fly and I said, "Where?" And they said, "Anyplace in the world."
So anyway, I got through basic training and they shipped to Colorado, Lowry Air Force Base. And I think the first or second week after I got there, and I was in tech school, I was downtown for about my first or second liberty in beautiful downtown Denver and I met some friends down there. And they had been visiting some young ladies from Wisconsin that they had met, and so that was my first view of my proposed spouse. And then we were at the bowling alley at the base a little bit later and I met Joyce formally then and we started dating. And that was in February, April I gave her an engagement ring and in August we were married in 1962, and we're coming up on 40 years now. So the short courtship seemed to have worked. She didn't find out enough about me to quit!
So anyway, that was our Denver experience the first time. And we got married on the 4th of August. There was a big flap going on in the military at the time that was just at about the time of the... Between the Berlin Crisis and Human Crisis, so you had a number of things going on.
And the other thing that was going on was the nuclear testing. And of course we can talk about that now, the security that had been lifted off of it, but that was basically where I was working for four years then was in detection systems with the, what's now the Air Force Technical Application Center. And we would go out and fly, as we said, against events when a nuclear event occurred, then we'd go out and try to grab as many pieces of the debris as we could and bring them back for analysis to keep us heads up on what the Russians and the Chinese and the French were doing in terms of nuclear testing. 5
So my activity then was flying for 4 years mostly in the Polar Regions and into Japan. So I flew out of the west coast. And we flew with Air Weather Service, the Hurricane Hunters they called them. So we would fly against weather events, which coincided with the nuclear testing. And so we would follow those air masses around the globe, particularly around the northern part of the globe. And we, you might say, played in the edges, you know the "no mans land" areas off the north coast of Russia or off the coast of China and South China Sea and those areas. So it got a little bit exciting once in awhile!
So anyway I spent 4 years doing, and of course at the time, like I say, the security was such that even Joyce was not allowed to know where I was going.
And she was in, by this time we, of course I should have said, to be transferred to Sacramento, McClellan Air Force Base in California, and she was there. The week that we transferred as newlyweds I was shipped off to Alaska for supposedly 90 days. As it turned out they said I was too love sick and they sent me back home after the first week! So it worked out that we spent the next 4 years, I didn't unpack literally for 4 years, I was on call constantly. And she, by that time, had managed to get a job with the federal government, working on base as a secretary in a building near mine. And so in one sense she was able to be close, being part of the military community, and that was a sense of security both for her and I, and there was a place for her while I was out. So any given time, I'd be back in, I wouldn't be able to let her know that I was back until I actually got back to my office and I'd give her a call. So that was our extended honeymoon then for 4 years. During that length of time I had 7 months overseas time compiled. So I actually was deferred in far as any, you know, future overseas activity.
And then I got done with that in January of '66. In the meantime I had started back to school, I began looking seriously at resource types of programs, I was thinking either Berkley or Humboldt State. Their programs at that time weren't really as credentialed in wildlife as I thought they should be, so I still had New York State residency, and I transferred back after we got out of the military. And I got my associates degree from the American River College; I had been working on that while I was in the Service.
Dorothe Norton:
What college was that?
Dave Janes:
American River College.
Dorothe Norton:
Where is that?
Dave Janes:
And that's in North Highlands, just near Sacramento.
Dorothe Norton:
Okay. 6
Dave Janes:
And it was a 2 year program; I got my degree in math and physical science, mainly as a chemistry major.
And then transferred from there to New York State again in Syracuse and was accepted at the College of Forestry. And we went back, again as a junior student, then and finished up my degree in wildlife biology, my undergraduate at Syracuse. And then I got out, tried to find a job in 1969, and there was not anything to be had. Hoped to be part of the federal workforce at that time because that's where all the wildlife forestry programs were. Ended up... We had 2 kids by this time; Betsy, our oldest, was born in 1968, she's actually Elizabeth Ann but she's been Betsy since she came out of the hospital. And then Karen was born in 1970, after I had gone back for masters program.
Since there were no jobs I decided I still had 2 years of GI Bill and it was an income, and I also got a scholarship, a grant from New York Higher Education Assistance Corporation and had a Research Foundation Grant there. So anyway, I started back as a grad student on a master's program, and I had told them I would not be back for masters until I had a project I wanted to work on. I didn't like the concept of working for professors who had pet projects they wanted completed, so that was probably being a little bit older than I guess then the other students that were there. But anyway, I went back. And I had always from childhood had been, you know, enamored, I guess you might say, of herons and the great blue heron was one of my favorites, and still is. And so I started my research program on the great blue heron, doing the courtship and breeding ecology. And I put my proposal in and they said, "Well, if you're going for a doctorate that's fine, but for a masters you've got to cut it back." So I did. And I ended up with, ultimately with 120 page masters thesis on the great herons.
Dorothe Norton:
And you have a son too...
Dave Janes:
And then our son came along several years later after I was with the Fish and Wildlife; Dan was born in 1976 then.
Dorothe Norton:
Oh, okay. What are the children doing now? So they aren't children any longer.
Dave Janes:
Yeah, they aren't children we found out as my oldest daughter was complaining about these grey strands that she's getting --- I told her it's a hereditary thing!
But our oldest daughter, Betsy, is in Temecula, California, just north of San Diego, and she's a technical infrastructure engineer, did that. She basically is working for GMAC, or GMAC-RFC is actually the division she works for, and she handles most of the develop program roll outs for the computer financial systems that they use with GMAC. 7
And then Karen is a representative for Essilor Corporation; and Essilor is the maker of Varilux lenses. She's a certified optician and certified instructor in optical systems, and she's in Bozeman, Montana right now.
And Ben is right now a, I'll say federal want-to-be! He's on a temporary in Fargo, North Dakota. And he's working for the, what is now the Farm Service Agency. And he's going out and doing digitizing, basically GIS/GPS types of things. He's been designated the lead digitizer for the Fargo office, and he's got a team of I think 6 people that are working for him right now, basically at a Grade 5. And there are many promises that they will have him on permanent status here within the month. So he's hoping that'll come to be. He really does like... Of course being a product a federal family, you know, he's always been very familiar with federal agencies. He worked as a summer student for FEMA, on projects in Colorado and has been in and out of say government-type jobs. And he also worked with the Department of Energy at Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado. So he's getting to a permanent point.
Dorothe Norton:
Why did you want to work for the Service?
Dave Janes:
Actually, I wanted to work for Service I guess while I was back in college. When I was in California working on my associate's degree I was still in the military and I was traveling back and forth to Alaska. And one of the things that was going on in Alaska at that time, and this is in the early '60's, there was a project that the Corps of Engineers had proposed called the Rampart Dam. Any of you that are familiar with the Rampart Dam Proposal, it would have developed a lake in the central part of Alaska, about 10% larger than Lake Erie --- so a very, very large area. And any of you that are familiar with Alaska today know that it's now called Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge. So all of this large Yukon Flats area was proposed by the Corps of Engineers to be under a large body of water.
Well as a member of the military, of course I was up there flying over this area quite a bit, and of course you can't be in that part of central northern Alaska without being overwhelmed by the resource, you know, it's just tremendous.
And then I found out about the Rampart Dam Project, I got concerned about it, as you might say young activist/environmentalist. And I was literally hauling material back and forth from Alaska, material in terms of information, to my classmates at the American River College in our resource conservation class. And we had all of those things that we had the time in the active '60's, you know, I had my stickers up on the wall, "Damn the Corps" and all these types of things!
But anyway, we got very involved; I did a copy of the Fish and Wildlife Service report on the Rampart Dam Project. So that kind of got me pointed more towards Fish and Wildlife Service, and then I transferred to the College of Forestry, majoring in wildlife. 8
And the outlet at that time was either go to work for the feds or go to work for the state, or possibly go to work for some county organization, you know, one of the naturalist organizations. So my leaning was going towards the feds.
I put out a whole series of applications when I got my bachelors degree. I say I wrote the letters and Joyce typed them, we had quite a paper mill going for awhile there trying to get a job. I even applied for jobs in Montana and was rejected by one of our former directors, so!
And anyway, ultimately I got my degree. There still were no jobs available, even when I had my masters other than I was able to corral a teaching position at the Mohawk Valley College which was in central New York there near Utica.
And I was on the Federal Registers by this time and hoping and hoping and hoping. I had high enough scores I figured that between my high scores and my Veteran's Preference that I would have a chance. And I ultimately got a call from Harvey Warner, and Harvey at the time was a realty supervisor in Boston, and he wanted to know if I would be interested in coming to work for the Fish and Wildlife Service as a forester. And he said I had qualified on that register besides a wildlife biologist.
And of course my gut reaction was, "Well gee, I've got this nice teaching position in a university setting in Utica, of course I'll come to Fish and Wildlife!"
So anyway, I thought if I was going to make the switch from the academic world to Fish and Wildlife, I had to do it then because of the economics. Now I'm a graduate with a master's degree and I've got a wife and 2 children, and I need to do something on a more permanent basis. And the money was the same.
I went to work then; actually I had an interview with Harvey at a truck stop on the New York State Thruway, that's where my formal interview for Fish and Wildlife Service occurred. I was on the way home from teaching and Harvey was on his way back to Boston from doing some work out at Iroquois Refuge, Iroquois was just coming online at that time and so he was acquiring land out there. And so anyway, we had our interview on the New York State Thruway and I was accepted for a position in Boston.
And I went to work then for the Fish and Wildlife Service as a forester/land acquisition, and basically I became a forester appraiser working in realty.
And aside to that little meeting with Harvey that he was out doing the acquisition program at Iroquois Refuge, prior to my going into the Service and prior to Iroquois Refuge being established, the landowners were aware that the federal program was coming in. One of the things I was doing as a logger is I went over and I helped log off some of the properties that were being sold to Fish and Wildlife Service! So I like to rationalize that as a, you know, it was a renewable resource!
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So anyway, some of the logged off areas in the 1950's and '60's, I was partially responsible for. Larry Smith, who became the refuge manager there, used to tweak me about that.
But anyway, I began work then in Boston in 1971 for the Fish and Wildlife Service. And I moved the family, small kids and everything that we had, our whole entire worldly possessions in a U-Haul, and found a place. We couldn't afford anything in the Boston area, the cost of living was way too high, and finally found an apartment on the North Shore of Amesbury, Massachusetts.
Dorothe Norton:
Where?
Dave Janes:
Amesbury, which was up by Newburyport. And there were several people that were commuting into Boston from that area, and so I was, after talking with Harvey and talking with the people in the office, I was able to find a place there. And we got a two-bedroom apartment and settled into our career. And for the first year I had to stay on the road because as long as I was getting per diem I could make it! I didn't eat but I... We were able to make it, and we were a family of 4 living on $8,300.00 a year as a GS-7.
So anyway, that was our first year or so with the Fish and Wildlife Service. And Harvey, bless him, he said that he knew that my intent was to be in biology and that I was a wildlife biologist, and he would like to have me for at least a year's time. He said that he knew that I wanted to get into refuges.
So anyway, a year later I was eligible for my 9, and the Great Swamp Refuge came open for an assistant manager position. However, they did not want me as a 9, they wanted me as a 7 lateral, and at that time you didn't ask questions. The regional director was Dick Griffith at that time. And we just basically did everything in lockstep. And Tom Horn was no longer the refuge supervisor but we were expected to do things in a pretty much a military manner from left to right so to speak. That's the way refuges were at that time. And you went into refuges and you had a trainee position, you waited your turn into the next level came up and then you made application.
All of these things of course, if there was a position available you very seldom had the chance to get in place, you were expected to transfer. And I think that was kind of the rule of thumb. Is that if you were going to get a position the phrase I'm sure you've heard is "upward and outward," you know. You were promoted upward but you went somewhere else to get it. And so anyway, I had to defer my GS-9 in order to get into refuges, so I stayed at a 7 level for an extra year.
I transferred from Boston in 1972 then and went to Great Swamp Refuge as the primary, and as a GS-7, with a promise of a GS-9 in a year's time if I behaved reasonable well.
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We of course became friends, you know, but George Gavutis was the manager at that time, and he really didn't know what he was getting, he was getting a "pig in a poke" because this guy from realty, you know, in Boston that was coming down and all he knew about was wearing a suit, you know. Well, George did not know also that I had spent probably 5 years working on construction in logging and heavy equipment and found out when I got down there. They had quite a big program for expansion of facilities and everything else on the refuge. And I started checking around to see what was going on, learning my job. George showed me the different things, he kind of explained to me that this is a dike and this is a stitch, and he was very solicitous of my lack of knowledge that I didn't, didn't expand on for him!
Anyway, this went on for a week or two and then I was out one day, and we had a little John Deer dozer out there, and one of the other staff needed equipment moved and so anyway I just went out and climbed on the little "Johnny" and took off across the dike line with it. And George got a little bit upset not knowing who was running his equipment around. So anyway I fessed up that I actually had been a truck driver in college, I was hauling dirt and worked for a contractor when I was not going to school. So anyway, I ended up pretty much handling the construction program then at Great Swamp for a year or two.
And we also were doing an expansion at the time, so I, because I had the realty background, I did appraisals on several of the properties around the Black Brook Addition as they called it.
So I was wearing several hats, and basically that's what I did throughout my career with Fish and Wildlife was I worked back and forth between refuges and realty and on new and expansion refuges. So that was kind of where my career thrust went for the next 20 somewhat years, you know, 25 years.
I was at Great Swamp then until 1974. And in the meantime George Gage transferred out and I became acting manager. And at this time also we had quite a controversy with the deer hunting programs. At that time there was a ban on refuge hunting, deer hunting. It went through the court; the courts upheld the Service's position. We were getting a tremendous amount of media coverage at the time, at one time I was handling most of the media and most of the press there. It was good exposure in terms of I got the chance to you might say evangelize for the Service and talk to the some of the programs and actually work the media a little. And help get the message out about what we were trying to do in terms of habitat protection and wildlife resource and the threats of disease to overpopulation and all these types of things.
So we got a very you might say intensive couple of years at Great Swamp with everything from protestors, between the animal rights groups and PETA and various movie starts that were riding the band wagon at the time, getting a little bit of coverage, to people from the New York Times. We had Time Life programs working in the area, I had a chance to work with them, they did a series on what they called Urban Wilds. And 11
so we were able to get information into that on Great Swamp and all of the resource values that were there.
One of the things I do recall now was flying over Great Swamp when we were doing deer counts, and looking to the east and seeing the newly constructed Twin Towers in New York City. And that really came back home in my mind this past September 11th. But that was one the things that I had written in one of the narratives was that New York is so close that you can almost hear the, you know... You could see the Twin Towers as you fly over the refuge and you can almost hear the wolves howling in South Bronx! So it was an interesting experience.
We transferred out of Great Swamp then. Well in between times Larry Smith came in as the refuge manager there. And Larry was just a tremendous, and still is a tremendous person. Anybody that's ever worked with him knows he's a gentle man, a very efficient man in terms of I'll say raising and rearing refuge managers. And if you look at Larry's legacy, you're looking at George Gavutis, you're looking at Ed Moses, you're looking at Ed Moses, you're looking at Tom McAndrews, you're looking at Jim Smith. If you want to talk about refuge managers that have been successful, you're probably looking at having a Larry Smith in their background somewhere along the way. And I was able to benefit from that also.
I then became acting manager again because Larry was in the process of transferring to Albuquerque, and he came down to help with the deer hunt controversies.
I transferred, I was attempting to get into Region 3, and the way things worked back then in the "no pre-selection process" is I went back to Wisconsin on vacation to visit my in-laws, and Joyce and I were vacationing back there. Well they live in Trempealeau County, Trempealeau Refuge is right there. At the time Helma Wolke was the manager and she was getting ready to leave. And I went down and talked with Helma, and I'm trying to remember who all... Jim Lanakey was supposed to come in there I think, I may have time sequence wrong here. But anyway, I was interested in getting into Region 3 for a whole variety of reasons.
But anyway, I went over and I talked with Wayne Gueswel, who was at the Winona office at that time for "Upper Miss" Refuge. And Wayne said that what we should do is go up and talk to the regional office because he thought I would have a better chance at several other locations, one of the was a new refuge called Big Stone out in western Minnesota and the one was at Seney. So anyway, I went back to my... I had made arrangements then with Wayne to go into the regional office the next day and talk with them, and Wayne made some phone calls. And we were thinking that well we could do a transfer possible.
And I got back to my in-laws house that night and my mother-in-law said that I had a phone call from my boss in Boston. And I said, "Why would they be calling me?" And so anyway, I called. This was Ed Moses who was the refuge supervisor, or assistant supervisor at the time, and Howard Woon was the refuge supervisor. Anyway, Ed said, 12
"What the hell are you doing out in Region 3?" I said, "Well, I'm on vacation and..." He said, "What are you doing talking with the people out there?" I said, "Well, I've been chatting with them." He said, "Well don't make any plans about transferring to Region 3." He said, "You've been selected for the refuge manager position at Eastern Neck Refuge." And I said, "I haven't applied for it." He said, "Get your 171 in, you've been selected for the position."
So anyway, the bottom line was they knew that if I didn't get a position as a refuge manager in Region 5, they were going to lose me to Region 3. And at least at that time they thought I was a valuable commodity, so...! But I had to have a... Of course they were still involved in all the court suits with deer hunting and the Eastern Neck Refuge had also, and Black Water had also been part of that court activity. So they did seriously want me to help take over some of the problems at Eastern Neck Refuge, of which there were a number.
So anyway, I got snookered out of being transferred into Region 3, and that was kind of the way things went for me for the rest of my career. Every time I tried to make a move into Region 3, something else jumped up in front of me that happened to be a better offer. So I guess I should say thank you to some refuge supervisors or realty supervisors, but it made for an interesting career series.
So anyway, then I transferred to East Neck Island. The previous manager there was Roger Steiner. Roger Steiner had had issues with Fish and Wildlife Service, and as we found, or as I found out as a refuge manager of the East Neck Island, there was a rather strong odor that showed up in the vents of the office where I was to take over. And I think we found it was either fox scent or some type of material that had been put down in the ducts by a disgruntled and former employee it sounds like.
So anyway, we got things cleaned up there. One of the things I did at East Neck Island was to start it moving. It had been a small refuge, 2,300-acre island that was basically stopped from being developed. There had been built one beach house there, which happened to be our office, and there was an older home and shed area. That was basically the refuge facility.
Again, like I said earlier, this seemed to be where I ended up in my career was on new and developing refuges and acquisition programs. Acquisition had been pretty much complete but when I came to East Neck Island it was kind of a series of dirt tracks, the office was a small beach house. There was no indication other than a little wooden sign there was anything that was part of a federal facility.
So when I came in I found on my first visit there, before I had even met the staff I had found one harried biotech trying to ride herd on a bunch of concessionaires that were selling everything from souvenirs and hotdogs to various paraphernalia for a field trial program that was going on there. And I talked with the guy and told him I was curious about what was happening. And I could tell from attitude he was not happy with what was happening but it had been set up by the previous manager, so he had to deal with it. 13
He said he hoped that they were going to get a new manager in. So after I let him talk for a little bit I introduced myself and he got red-faced but I said, "I agree with everything you said." And so anyway, I asked him some very important questions about some of the things that were going on there. And I only had two other employees besides that, two maintenance people and the technician. And I asked him what was being done about some of the problems on the area and he said that nothing had been done.
And so we started out new. And it was fun because I found out that there was an old light standard that was down at Blackwater Refuge, Bill Julian was the manager down there at the time. And so I started on a scrounge mission. And that was one of the other things I had done at the regional office, I set up a surplus property program and got a lot of things coming out of the military. And had also set up the operating engineers union as a designated training site for operating engineers, which meant that everything that we had in terms of dikes and concrete structures and everything else was done by operating engineers as part of their training program. The cost was very nice.
Anyway, when I got to Eastern Neck then there was the opportunity I guess for me to continue scrounging, and I went down to Blackwater Refuge I found an old light stand there.
And my secretary/biotech/assistant manager was Marion Ireland, and he lived in the local area there at Eastern Neck. He worked pretty much full-time at his other job, which was working in the farming community as they call it "the man with the golden arm" as the Artificial Breeders Association. So he would also be working on cattle breeding programs.
But anyway, the other part of Marion Ireland was that he was a former Marine, and I told him, I said that the one thing that we were going to do was we were going to have a refuge that looked good. I said... We didn't have any budget; I think we had a $67,000.00 budget or something like that! It was a horrendously low budget; it paid the salary and enough so that we could get gas for the tractors. But I said, "Because we're poor." I said, "It doesn't mean we have look poor." And I said, "There's a lot of things we can do on this refuge that will make it look like we are becoming a better facility here."
And so that was kind of the thrust I had on the first year that we there. And we did have an old road grater, we did have other refuges around that we could beg, borrow and steal equipment and whatever.
I got the old light standard from down at Blackwater Refuge and I told Marion and Kenny Fletcher, he was our maintenance technician there, and I said, "We're going to dig a hole and we're going to plant this thing." And I said, "When we plant it" I said "we're going to put a flag on it." I said, "We're a federal facility" and I said "we should be having a flag out here." And so anyway, the flag pole went up and I always enjoyed that Marion, as the old ex-Marine, he made a point of getting out there every morning first thing when he got to work and he had that flag up the pole, and he really did take pride in doing that. 14
So we had our little beach house office and had the flag pole, we improved the parking lots, graded the roads in. The area had originally been a part of the estate of the R.J. Reynolds family and historically it had also been part of the Lambert Wickes family. I'll tell you a little bit more about that in a minute.
But the R.J. Reynolds Estate used this as their hunting area; they had this island in the Chesapeake, it was all designed around cages and pens. They used this was going back into the '20's; the teens, 20's, and probably beyond when on the Chesapeake they used calling birds so that they could get the wild flocks tolling into the area. They also had green fields so that they had a good crop available for birds. This was just a way of life on the Chesapeake. And they had so many the game agent could tell you it didn't necessarily change as after the migratory bird laws came into effect. And some of that still goes on today.
But anyway, the facilities were there, and one of the things it had was an old clubhouse. All done in cedar, cedar paneling, a very large great room in the center, they had individual rooms off either end, a large area. All of this to me spoke of an excellent facility for environmental-like programs. And it was still in pretty good shape. So anyway, I started scouting around other refuges; Bombay Hook, Blackwater. And I was able to convince them to do SPIKE camps over there for YCC. And so for no cost I got a bunch of YCC kids to come over and do SPIKE camps and we started cleaning up the place. Ultimately now, I have not been back for many years, but I guess now they do have an Environmental Ed Center developed in there and there fully up and operating.
The other thing was that this was just prior to the bicentennial, and there was a lot of activity going on in the local area. I found out that working with Bob Johnson, who was the centennial coordinator up in Rock Hall, Maryland, that the island had originally been owned by the Wickes family. And Lambert Wickes was a sea captain during the Revolutionary War, he had the ship Reprisal, and he was the one that took Benjamin Franklin to Paris in the Revolutionary War for negotiations with the French. Lambert Wickes was ranked above John Paul Jones, who we all here of course know. Found out then that on his return from Paris, or return from France, the ship Reprisal was lost at sea with all hands except for the ship's cook. So anyway, Lambert Wickes had a shortened career, went down at sea.
But the memory on the eastern shore was long, there's a long history of ship building. The ship Reprisal supposedly built on Eastern Neck Island and all of these things.
So in preparation for the centennial the local area wanted to be able to work on the Lambert Wickes concept. And, in fact, they were advertising Rock Hall as the birthplace of Lambert Wickes. It was also a crossing place; George Washington used to cross from the western shore over to East Shore at Rock Hall.
A whole variety of things going on with the historical aspects; I was able to, on a nickel-dime budget again, put together a area that was the former Wickes home site. We did 15
oyster shell paths, I talked the people in Boston into making up some signs for us so that we could provide some information. And we had a dedication of the historic site then at or about the 4th of July of the year following.
The interesting thing was is that they found that there was a ship, the Destroyer, Lambert Wickes that was in commission. And they also found that one of the cadets at the Navy Academy was a great-granddaughter of Lambert Wickes, and she was in the Navy Chorus.
So we had the dedication ceremony with a number of dignitaries, the top (unclear) general from the state of Maryland was there along with a lot of the local officials in that. And we dedicated the site, the ship passed in review offshore on the Chesapeake, and the great-granddaughter of Lambert Wickes sang the Navy hymn. And so it was a quite moving ceremony and the locals thought a lot of it.
So that was one thing... It was a short stay at Eastern Neck Refuge, I was very happy that I was able to get involved, get the refuge involved with the local community, and since that time it's I think been much more active. We did quite a few things in a short period of time there.
At the same time we had a few personal things that went on. We lost one child while we there, not born but it was a miscarriage. And also we were being asked to go to Dismal Swamp, the Great Dismal Swamp down in Virginia. They had lost their manager there. Steve Smith had been the manager, and Steve was at that time also having some I guess you might call it family problems or family situation, and one that required him to transfer back to Texas. There was nothing available for him and so he ended up literally leaving the Service at that point in time. It turned out several years later he was able to come back with the Service then. But at that point Steve had to literally bail out of his manager's position down at Dismal Swamp.
And so I took over as acting manager down there; however, I was still manager at Eastern Neck Island. And I spent my Monday commuting down to Portsmouth, or Suffolk, Virginia from Rock Hall, Maryland, and my Friday commuting back. And midweek then I managed at Dismal Swamp, weekends I managed at Eastern Neck Island. And that was my schedule for roughly 5 months. And then at the end of that time we were able finally to get things set up. One of the reasons for not transferring right away was, of course as I said, there was a problem with our family, that being a lost child. And Joyce was not terribly healthy at that point in time so we took a little time to let her recuperate, and we just deferred the transfer until we could do that.
So anyway, then we did manage to get down to Virginia, transferred down there and I took over fulltime then as a refuge manager at Dismal Swamp. Dismal was originally an ownership of Union Camp Corporation, they donated a portion of it to Fish and Wildlife Service. Union Camp was a large lumber company, and they had timbered a lot of the Dismal Swamp for pulpwood. They had a large pulp factory south of the Dismal Swamp area in North Carolina, also several other owners in there, Georgia Pacific. And so there 16
are all the timber companies and a number of private owners, primarily hunt clubs, they used these areas.
So we started out at Dismal Swamp then, again a new facility, there just was nothing in terms of the office. And we started out, our office was in the basement of the post office in downtown Suffolk, and we managed to go from the basement of the post office to the back of a lumber yard. We literally took over one of their warehouses, and stole lumber off the shelves and made partitions and that became our office! And we used the lumber yard facility then while I was there, and we were able to get some programs started there.
The refuge was at 5,300-acres when I first started there, and by the time I left I think we had it up to slightly over 100,000-acres through the combination of sales. And Howard Reiwoldt was the (unclear) out of Boston office. And of course I worked with Howard over the years.
And so anyway, with my realty background and with his work down there, you know, we were able to get the refuge enlarged. And then we had help from some of the other local refuges, some guy named Denny Holland, whoever he is!
Dorothe Norton:
We don't....
Dave Janes:
(Unclear)... as we called it, Back Bay Refuge, he had his own problems over there. But anyway, Denny was always willing to help us too at Dismal Swamp. Again, we were the poor kids looking for handouts wherever we could.
Worked again with the military to get surplus items, got some of that going. Also at that time, because of the interest in the wetlands, the environment that was going on nationwide, we started working also with the USGS. Virginia Carter was working down in the swamp at that time and she had an assistant, Pat Gammon. And so we ended up developing a USGS sub-office down there. Well, Virginia went on then of course to develop the Classification Wetlands along with Lou Gordon. And so a lot of that earlier work went on right there at Dismal Swamp.
We went out and did classifications; we were doing site studies, doing ground-truthing. A lot of fun, just a lot of unique things going on, then of course Dismal Swamp was unique in itself because of the remoteness of it. It was the northern most of the, you might say, southern great swamps, one of the northern most areas where you found not only Spanish moss, but you also found alligators. And so we did have a gator population on the south, on the North Carolina side of the refuge.
So the ultimate size of the refuge was supposed to be about 123,000-acres, and I don't know today what the exact size of it is but I think it's gotten pretty close.
17
So we spent several years there, and it was a very good time. We ended up having our son Dan in 1976 there, and then we were there for another, just about another 6 months to a year.
And while I'd been down there we had been talking about planning programs, and at that time... I'll jump back a little bit, but when I was working in realty I'd also been working with refuges in planning. And at that time Bill French was in the regional office in Region 5, and I think Bill is back in Michigan now, I know he didn't make our meeting then but I think he was on the list. And anyway, Bill was the, as they called him, acquisition biologist I guess at that time, and so he would do the biological parts of checking out refuges, or proposal sites. And so at that time when I was still back in the regional office with realty I worked with Bill up along the northeast coast. And we did a lot of the overflights for the Coast Guard, access property sites such as Seal Island and Cross Island and all of the Coast Guard sites up there that ultimately became refuges. And I also did the proposal for Petit Manan. That was one of the first refuge proposals I did.
So anyway, that was... I'd kind of been in and out of acquisition planning. And so when I got down to Dismal Swamp, doing the planning for the expansion on that area and several other areas, I had talked with Bill about and he wanted me to write up a position description for a planner. And at that time of course I was a grade 11; yeah grade 11 at Dismal Swamp. I was working on upgrades, each one of the refuges I worked on I upgraded the manager's position for the person that came in behind me, so I didn't get to benefit from it!
But anyway, I was an 11 at Dismal Swamp and Bill... I'd done an upgrade proposal for Dismal, the same time I did a proposal for an acquisition biologist, a planning biologist, and sent that in to Bill, told him this was what I thought that should be in that position. And several months later I got a call back from Bill and he says, "Your position is being advertised on the sheets." So he says, "You better put in for it." So anyway, that was when I found out that I was I guess one of the first planning biologists.
And I ended up going into Region 5 again in the regional office in 1976, or '77 actually, and worked in acquisition planning then. And that was kind of where I stayed in Region 5 was acquisition planning.
And we did the proposal for Canaan Valley Refuge, which hooray it's finally a refuge! And I got a call from Walt Quist that said one of these days they were going to have a dedication. I don't know when that is occurring or whether it has occurred, but at least I have a sense of satisfaction that it is now a national wildlife refuge, and that was a rough fight to get that.
At the same time we got involved with doing NEPA Documents, and I had the pleasure of writing the, pleasure and pain of writing the first EIS for refuge acquisition for the Fish and Wildlife on Canaan Valley. Then we went on down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and I did the proposal for Currituck Outer Banks, which we have some pieces of 18
that. And there's just a variety of different acquisitions around the region that we worked on over the next few years.
Then we wanted again to get into the Midwest, and I do have this thing about Midwest values and I had said to Joyce, we'd discussed it a number of times. I said that if our kids are going to be raised with the values that we hold dear that's those core values of you might say home, country, and god. Not necessarily in that order, but that the place to get that is in the Midwest.
Well anyway, little did we know the district manager position for Devils Lake in North Dakota came up, and we hadn't lived in North Dakota yet so we thought this would be a kick, a new experience. And I applied for the district manager position. That was a grade 13, so I thought that would be a good promotion also, and I was accepted. And as I kind of found out later maybe it was by default, that nobody else wanted to apply for it, and I found out when I got there why! But it turned it out to be a whole mixed bag in terms of experience, and we did spend then the next 9 years, 8 years in Devil's Lake, North Dakota raising kids, getting them through elementary school, through high school and, as I said, getting all those Midwest values. They learned (unclear), a little bit (unclear) and everything that you have in terms of the heritages of these areas. Of course they got that good Norwegian heritage from their mother and me.
But anyway, we just did have a good time there. A lot of it was bittersweet, now there was things that happened during that timeframe that happened in the family that we really had to struggle with. Joyce lost her father, I lost my dad, had a brother that a major heart attack, we lost aunts, uncles, relatives. All because, of course, that's that time in your lives when you just start getting into high school and your parents and other senior relatives are beginning to pass. So we had those things to contend with.
We had the issues of Devils Lake itself, or I did. And that was a very hostile environment in terms of the wetlands issues. I was able to I think help diffuse some of those hostilities. I became more involved in the local community maybe then previous managers had. I got involved with the Lion's Club even though some of our, I might say, biggest violators may have been Lion's Club members. We still were able to talk face to face and keep our business in our office so to speak.
We had a number of major court cases that the Fish and Wildlife Service won, I got used to writing depositions on a regular basis. I was able to take the, I'd say, a couple of the key cases. We did get prison sentencing on one repeat violator. We were able to reaffirm the right of the Fish and Wildlife Service to exercise enforcement of easement contracts through the federal court system. We were able to assert authority over county authorities in terms of water boards; that was the time when we took the town or county water board to court on criminal charges, not civil, which shocked them and the local population I think.
But anyway, we were able to establish that if you signed a contract with the federal government it was a binding contract, and you couldn't just take the money and blow it 19
off. So they did have responsibilities that went with the purchase of those easement programs, or the easements in the program.
So the Devils Lake Wetlands District was a tremendous wetlands resource, as all of the wetland districts I think, but we had one of the larger districts. The 8 counties that we served there is basically the same size as the state of Maryland with a little bit more thrown in, maybe Delaware. And we had to operate this along with 3 major national wildlife refuges; Sullys Hill, Lake Alice, and the satellite refuges. We had 11 easement refuges, we had 3,500 easement contracts out there to administer.
And that meant of course we had to do overflights every year to assure compliance, we had to the contacts in the case of noncompliance. We had a limited number of people to do all these things. Denny Strom was my primary assistant when I got there; Steve Grock was my other assistant. I brought in Larry Veikley as an assistant. Larry had also been my biotech when I was at Great Swamp in New Jersey, so we went back many years, our kids grew up together. And then I had several other managers, or assistant managers that came in Devils Lake; Gene Williams was there as an assistant, Sid Kazak, she was an assistant manager for several years there. Emma Volke had been there. Herb Nelson was the biotech down at Sullys Hill. Jay Wolsky was the maintenance technician and equipment operator down there. His dad was also the technician down at Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge.
So we had a really just... Oh then I ended up among other things I had the Nekoma YACC Program. So overall we ended up with a staff of probably, between staff and seasonal employees with YCC and YACC, we were probably upwards of 50 to 55 people at one time.
Then we did shut down the Nekoma facility. We got into a huge property, surplus property transfer on that. Nekoma had been originally a missile site and then it was switched over to YACC Program. There were warehouses full of lumber; if any of you had been familiar with the YACC, it was an extensive program. But we were able to get the surplus then all distributed out to the various refuges. And I think I came out okay on it. We didn't lose much; we had pretty good documentation on everything.
So anyway, in all of that process then we had a family situation come up. Our oldest daughter became quite ill and so she was being taken care of. She had a serious combination of problems with scoliosis and a tracheal collapse and it involved anyway a lot of time being spent at Mayo Clinic. So Joyce and Dan, who was younger at that time, would come over to the Mayo Clinic with Betsy, or Dan would stay home if it was during the school year, and Karen and I and Dan were being bachelors back in Devils Lake and Joyce was taking care of Betsy at Mayo Clinic. She had 4 major surgeries, and through it all she hung tough. And as I mentioned before she's enjoying an excellent career as a professional out in California right now as opposed to being told a number of years ago that she probably would end up as an invalid and not have any career. So she, through her own pluck and skill of doctors at Mayo, has come a long way.
20
But the consequence of that was that I was supposedly all things to all people; trying to be a parent, trying to be a refuge manager on a very critical wetland district. And the doctors finally... Well, I began to develop some symptoms of my own and the doctors finally said, "You've got a choice you know, you either fall over or you quit doing what you're doing." And of course I couldn't quit doing what I was doing with family so I opted to step down then from the district manager position at Devils Lake.
The Service was I'll say very gracious. There are probably private sector companies that would say, "Okay, forget it, goodbye." But I had no choice; I had to stay in that area because of the doctors and because of the family and school situation and everything else. You do not transfer your daughter in her senior year, it is not a good thing and I refused to do that so. If it had come to that I would have said, "You know, I'm sorry." I would have to leave the Service.
But they also had a need there, and that was to have a district biologist in the eastern part of the state. There were a number of things going on in terms of wetland inventory work, waterfowl inventory work, and also someone who needed to handle some of these issues that were still floating around out there, no pun intended, that required more I guess you might say "watch dog" activity.
So I took on that role then as a district biologist, worked throughout the eastern part of North Dakota then in several of the districts. Spent time with Northern Prairie Research, worked with Lou Gordon on other square mile survey types things, and overall did inventory work throughout the area. I signed my son on as a volunteer for one summer and we went out and spent the summer counting ducks on the (unclear). And he's still doing it, only he does it with a shotgun now!
Then we... I had hoped that we would be able to get things resolved in about a 2 year period of time, and we did. But anyway, then at the end of 2 years I said I was available to go somewhere, and we were able to then transfer back into acquisition planning, only this time I went into Denver and went to work for Paul Hartmann and Harvey Wittmier.
And Harvey had been working for Paul, who had been working for Bob Young; Bob was a realty chief at that time. Paul switched over into a Heritage Program {can't think of the name of it now}. Anyway, he had switched out of realty, working in one of the other programs there. And Harvey was working as an assistant for Paul. Paul then came back when Bob then retired and went to work as chief realty, Harvey went as the chief of acquisition planning, and I came in then as Harvey's assistant in acquisition planning.
So then we went onto developing a bunch of new refuge programs, proposals in Region 6. Continuing along with some of the other acquisitions, but we got the environmental statements and public hearings on the Cokeville National Wildlife Refuge over in southwestern Wyoming. Another controversial one because of the cattle grazing programs and local opposition, but despite local opposition we got that pretty well taken care of/ And found that there were more friends then opponents it turns out, as it usually turns out, the local minority was there. 21
Then also I began working on the refuge proposal in eastern Kansas, and this was an area that's unusual for Region 6 because it had bottomland hardwood characteristics, which you know you don't find in the Prairie Mountain Region. So I developed a proposal then for Marais des Cygnes, and we did bring that to fruition then. Had a dedication over there and that is now online with the National Wildlife Refuge System.
And I worked on several other refuge proposals then; one of the last ones that I worked on was one I guess that I kind of probably ran at odds a little bit with the Service. The Service proposed a refuge out in the Centennial area of Morgan County, roughly out near Fort Morgan, Colorado. This had been an area where there had been a proposal a number of years previous by the Fish and Wildlife Service to develop a refuge peripheral to a large reservoir on the Platte River, on the South Platte.
Dorothe Norton:
What state is that?
Dave Janes:
Colorado, yeah. And so anyway, this proposal resurfaced because of the interest of a number of different groups in the metro-Denver area and preservation of the riparian habitat in that area.
I was tasked with going out and doing a series of public meetings and presenting a proposal to the public. The read I got from the locals when I started this was, "Hey, you guys are back here again. We didn't want you the last time; we don't want you this time. We can take care of our own."
So we went forward with the refuge proposal and went through a series of intensive negotiations with the local water authorities and everything else. And my read of it was that it's just not going to happen, there's got to be a better way.
I started working with a couple of the core group that were interested in protecting this area, and gradually we developed a product I guess I could call it that would be a combined private package along with some protective programs. And I started working with the group basically as an ad hoc committee member, and we developed what was called the Centennial Land Trust. And I just in fact got an email here several weeks ago that said that I would be happy to know that the Centennial Land Trust now has gotten almost 30,000-acres under protective easement along the area. There is no federal acquisition there, but the property is being protected by local initiative.
And even though I worked in acquisition programs for years with the Fish and Wildlife Service, I think there's a great opportunity, a greater opportunity to protect resource through private initiative than there is through federal acquisition programs. I like the "Blue Goose," but I don't like sometimes what we always call the "white sideitis" that comes along it, and that's the refuge manager that gets behind and all he sees is the white 22
side of the sign and it can be a detriment to the public benefits that are associated with habitat preservation.
So anyway, that's kind of where I ended up on the career then was you might say that was my parting shot, is getting a land trust developed. And then we retired out in 1997, March 31st. Joyce was working for Bureau of Reclamation by this time; she's my damn secretary, and she's my damn good secretary! She's been my support all the while through this, all of this career, and in more than one way she has been career.
But I think that overall we've had just a fun time with Fish and Wildlife Service. About enough that right now I'm signed on as a volunteer with "Upper Miss" National Wildlife Refuge. I am working with their Tundra Swan Program in the fall; we have a group called the Alma Tundra Swan Watch. And we provide volunteer services at a platform jointly constructed, developed by Fish and Wildlife Service, Corps of Engineers, and City of Alma, Wisconsin down at an area called Rieck's Lake. And last year we, the last 2 years anyway, we've provided interpreters services to roughly 20,000 visitors. That's the (unclear) in and around the area. And among other things, we provide guide service, you might say, to tour groups that come in, and I've been the tour coordinator for the past 3 years now, also one of the board members on that.
And they also are struggling to get some funding for restoration work on the Riech Lake area that's suffered greatly from the floods of the past; 1993, and of course last years flood on the "Upper Miss" that brought large amounts of silt down the Buffalo River, which is delta to the Mississippi at that point. And so there's been a lot of deposition in there, getting a lot of hybrid cattail and things like that, that are not conducive to swan migration rest areas and that. So we're looking for restoration there. However, the group does not have you might say credential, and I've been working with the Fish and Wildlife Foundation, trying to again develop a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization to see if we can get a nonprofit credential so that we can qualify then for funding to get some of the restoration work going. And of course this in conjunction with the "Upper Miss" Refuge.
And aside from that all I do is repair kitchens, bathrooms, family rooms, plant gardens, make wine, and do genealogical work.
Dorothe Norton:
So what position were you in when you retired? What was your position?
Dave Janes:
My position was an acquisition planning biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, Region 6, in Denver as a Grade 12. I retired March 31st, 1997.
Dorothe Norton:
In 1997, okay. 23
Dave Janes:
Yes, and that was 30 years, and I was able to take advantage of one of the bio's, one of the last bio's tech.
Dorothe Norton:
What was the high point of your career?
Dave Janes:
The day I was hired I think, yeah.
Dorothe Norton:
And what was your low point?
Dave Janes:
I'd say probably... I don't know if I could call it a low point... (Tape Ends).
Dorothe Norton:
What would you like to tell us about your career in the Service?
Dave Janes:
Well, I think in retrospect you look at 25 years plus with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the, I guess again, and it sounds somewhat like a broken record, but I think what I think of most of the Fish and Wildlife is the people. You have this strong sense of family organization and sense of I'll say refuge operations in particular. Where you literally lived as extended families in many cases, refuge housing tended to promote that you would have your neighbor, who would be your coworker, your neighbor's wives would be your wife's fellow shopper. You exchanged babysitters that way, you did things on your off time. Like typical refuges though, you spent most of your off time doing refuge things, you know, what's fun to do this evening? Well let's go count ducks. So you ended up doing a lot of those things. But I think that was a lot of what you felt, at least as far as a Service employee, a sense of family.
The other thing you felt was a very deep commitment to resource in terms of the concerns for what was happening to the resource, the efforts. Sometimes you may almost say superhuman that we went through to protect resource. You had you might say everything from flood to famine in terms of wildlife concerns, and personal concerns in some cases. I can recall New Jersey, how we ended up having to drive or boat through water to get back and forth to our homes, which luckily were on high enough ground. But the amount of flooding that went on, you puttered back and forth to where you wanted to go.
You had areas like when I was on East Neck Island, where you had tremendous storms coming in through the Chesapeake. I can recall seeing my at that time 6-year-old daughter coming on the big yellow school bus, and all I could see was the bus coming over the causeway onto East Neck Island after a strong storm had pushed all the water up 24
the bay and the bus was throwing a rooster tail and I've got a little girl with her ponytail bobbing in the back of the bus as she came through the water.
Everything went fine, everybody survived. You had all those types of problems that we lived with on a daily basis being out in the resource.
It did get a little scary sometimes; we had problems with equipment where you all the sudden sliding into the edge of a marsh because there was no longer any ground under your bulldozer. Or you found yourself, as we did, doing a lot of our aerial survey work. I personally had worked of course in the military as an aircrew member and had some rather tense experiences, but we also experienced this with the Service, and as well all know we've lost a number of Service employees through aircraft accidents.
We lost power, made that stick landing once in North Dakota. We had engine problems when we were doing overflights at Dismal Swamp. So those things... At the time, of course you're a lot younger so you're invincible as all young people are, but then all the sudden it's brought back to reality when you realize one of your coworkers may have been killed in a crash in Alaska or you lost another coworker to an automobile accident, you know, these types of things. So those hazards of working out in the resource are always there too.
We sunk airboats, waded ourselves back into shore. But it could have been a more hazardous situation had it occurred in deeper water or you weren't as well prepared for emergencies.
All those types of things go on when you're out on the refuges. The same thing occurs though when you're working in other programs. I put on an awful lot of miles on the road; saw a number of major vehicle accidents just doing acquisition program-types of things.
Sometimes you had people situations that would get pretty scary, not knowing whether you had law enforcement backup behind you or not. And we had to deal with those over the years.
But overall, the thrust I think has been.... The Service has been a good place to be for a career. I have seen a lot of change structurally I think in the Service, some of it not quite so obvious. But even things like when I started in Boston I worked in the regional office, the rule was you came into the regional office you will wear a sport coat at a minimum, and you will have a tie, and they will stay on your body for the day. Secretaries, not administrative assistants, they didn't exist, but secretaries who worked for men were to dress appropriately, which meant it would probably be a skirt, dress, heals, and various other gear! And this was the structure that you were in an office environment if you worked in a regional office in the late '60's or early '70's.
When you went out on the refuges, you still saw that same structure inside the offices. The secretaries came in, they were not expected to do anything other than secretary 25
things, and they were not expected to go out and do field work or things like that. So the consequence of that was that a lot of times the secretaries in the offices did not realize what was going on out in the field. And the best they could do when somebody called in was say, "Oh he's out in the field."
Then as you got into the '70's, then you started all of the sudden to see more and more female professionals come in, and they were not to be treated as lesser people, and I felt very strongly about that myself over the years, that I have always been a strong advocate of letting every person have as much as opportunity as they can take.
Some of the funniest times I've had is to watch a very small young lady down in Great Swamp climb onto a D8 bulldozer, you could barely see her hardhat above the seat but she was out there ripping and a tearing! I say why not. She can do it, let her do it you know. Give her the opportunity and give him the opportunity, let them grow as assistant managers or technicians or whatever. Learn what managing resources involve.
The other thing that's always been an interest to me I guess, and that's because of the programs I've been in, and that's to be out in front of the public. And it's the one thing that I think that the Service has to continue to focus on, they have still not gotten the handle on. And I guess that would be phrase that I would use, that after 25 years in some ways in terms of the public resource aspect of the agency is that they still don't get it. And I say that in a sense that we do not have the image as the second largest landholding agency of the federal government, we still are not present before the public in that sense.
The Park Service has fewer holdings then us, but they are a people resource agency. And I grant you, and of course this was the delineating statement back in the earlier years, and that we managed wildlife, they managed people. And we've got to get away from that, we've got to get to the point where we manage people. The wildlife knows how to take care of itself if we get the people management issues taken care of, and then we can enhance the wildlife part of it. But I think we need to continue to focus on the people management, the people resource management aspects for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
And I guess my perspective on that comes from walking into public meetings over the years and having to start at zero and explain to them what we do as an agency. When you have 200 people sitting out there, and you've got a refuge proposal sitting in front of you and you have to start explaining you're an agency for the Department of Interior, and that we manage wildlife resources and that we manage land and then we have way, way, lots of lands around the country.
If you're starting at that point, and the basic education to the public at a public meeting, then you have not gained much ground at all in terms of all the sudden throwing an acquisition proposal out on their lap so to speak and tell them, "We're going to take your property." Well, that's their first reaction of course, "We're going to take your property." Well, then you schedule the educational processing, and that's not the way we acquire lands. The whole talent pool of options available in terms protection of land.
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Those are things that the Service, as I say, needs to get a handle on. We don't have the credential in Congress, the consequences is that we do not have the budget credential that we need. I'm not saying that we should be necessarily trying to get the same amount of money as you have for fighting a war in Afghanistan, but we should at least be able to take our facilities at a minimum.
And I think one of the things that we could do, and I guess you can get into a long bureau argument on this, and that's, "Does the National Wildlife Refuge System want to be a stand-alone agency?" In many ways I think that this would be a very big plus. I don't know that we have the strength to do that. And I say strength in having the political clout and the people power to do that as a stand-alone agency. That's my only concern. I think there's many, many benefits if we're going to be a land resource management agency, which we are, we're a wildlife resource management agency but we are first and foremost I think a land resource management agency. And I've made this argument a number of times. If we're just wildlife resource management and we're a "pawn of the hunters," give me the K-Mart parking lot and I will give you all the ducks you want, 'cause I can raise them! That's not the issue. The issue is how do you present the wildlife to the public in terms of a land resource? What's the experience that you need to have as a wildlife viewer? I can look across the street here and see a pair of mallards, they're doing there mallard thing; hens there, drakes there, there'll be two more drakes coming, you know. Later on in the afternoon she's going out there quacking and there'll be a rig flight going on. They've been doing that for centuries but they're using the front lawn of my house to procreate and I've got a pretty good drop of mallards going on.
So you know those things take care of themselves. But how do you want the public to perceive this? Do they want to see the eagles soaring over Lake City? Do they want to see the eagles soaring a stand of conifers along the Bitterroot River? Do they want to see Peregrine Falcons flying out of the smoke stacks at Alma Park land? Or do they want to see Peregrine Falcons flying out of the bluffs above Bay City?
There are all those issues, concerns, needs. And we need to learn how to read the public perception of what wildlife resource is. We need to learn how to present that to the public. And we need to learn how to seek the funding for that. And whether it be as a stand-alone agency, National Wildlife Refuge Service or whether it be as a combined agency as it is right now, with a whole bunch of other issues and concerns. I don't know which is the best answer. But I do know the answer is to make the public aware of what we are as an agency. And if we can get that part of it nailed down, which we haven't, and we're going to come up here on our 100th anniversary. I think we're going to continue to suffer as an agency..
One of the things when I was a manager at Devils Lake, being a genealogist and being a historian, I like to look back, and it's maybe a trite phrase but I will say it again, "If you don't where you've been, how in the hell are you going to know where you're going?" And that is so much a part of the Fish and Wildlife Service.
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If they were to look back and see what happened at the start of the system, and if you went back to the 1907 and 1908, in that area, and you had Teddy Roosevelt signing proclamations, and he signed a number of them for remote areas of the country. At that time North Dakota was a remote area. Stump Lake was developed by a proclamation. So you had a national wildlife refuge out there very early in the system, right behind Pelican. You had Lake Ardoch being developed as a refuge.
And I looked at some of the old refuge manager narratives, or weekly reports as they were then, and the manager at Lake Ardoch had a little shed that he worked in, lived in the local area, worked with the local community. And his comment in one of his reports was it was the summertime and he had some project to work and he got the group of the local boys to work on it with him. And I think if we as an agency can get a group of the local boys to work with us, and he meant boys in the teenage sense, we should as an agency be able to get the local boys. And we have, to some extent, YCC programs and things like that, and to some extent the YACC, which maybe was more rehabilitative type of a program. But you can capture youth like that. But you have to also get, you might say the local "good old boys." And that's where your resource protection is going to be ultimately is to get the "good old boys" and "good old girls" out there, being advocates for the Fish and Wildlife Service as an agency that protects the wildlife resource.
Not for the Fish and Wildlife Service as a government agency but as an agency that represents and protects wildlife resource for those people. And once you can give them is a sense of ownership of that resource. And I don't care how you do it, whether you take them out and have them fill duck boxes with shavings, or whether you take them out there and help them identify birds, or whether you take them out there and have them digging up loosestrife. You've got to give them a sense of ownership of this resource, not lock it up. And if we can get to that point we have to protect it, no question. That's why we've got law enforcement. That's why you had a job for so many years! But we've got to also make that accessible, you know, to the public, either in their mind or physically. But if you want me to stay on this podium I can, I can go on for hours and hours and hours!
But it is the one thing that I do feel strongly that we've come away from the, a long ways from locking up refuges and keeping people out. And that is still there, and you find some people within the Fish and Wildlife Service that still have that mindset that the only reason they're out there is because, "Well, we've got to take care of our hunters or we've got take care our fisherman or we've got to take care..." But dang, don't get those little snots nosed brats out here running around stomping... You do have that mentality out there to some extent, but it's going away.
We've got to make sure that we have a I'll say a total commitment from the public to what we do as an agency if we're going to succeed and if we're going to continue as an agency. Otherwise there's going to be an erosion to wildlife resource and we're going to continue to have endangered species programs, we're going to continue to have land management issues come up that we cannot fight because we don't have the support of the public.
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Dorothe Norton:
Okay Dave, thank you so much for all of your time. And do you have any photographs or documents or anything you'd like to donate or share or?
Dave Janes:
I probably do, actually I do know that I've got a brochure that I made up to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the National Wildlife Refuge System.
Dorothe Norton:
Oh, well if you'd like to....
Dave Janes:
It's 25 years ago!
Dorothe Janes:
Yeah, but if...
Dave Janes:
But I don't know... I can't put my hands on it right at this moment.
Dorothe Janes:
Well when you find it just give me a buzz and I can pick it up sometime when I'm down at...
Dave Janes:
Yeah, I probably have some old photo's and stuff around too of...
Dorothe Janes:
Well just through and see what you'd like to, and it'll go into the archives.
Dave Janes:
If I can my computer back online again I might be able to cut some copies of stuff, scan in some photo's and that that I could probably get to you.
Dorothe Janes:
Who else do you feel we should interview?
Dave Janes:
Well if you haven't done it yet, Larry Smith would be one.
Dorothe Janes:
Larry Smith, and he is...? 29
Dave Janes:
He's down in Albuquerque.
Dorothe Janes:
Albuquerque, okay.
Dave Janes:
Larry is...
Dorothe Janes:
How old a man is he, approximately?
Dave Janes:
I'm going to say he's very close to 80 now.
Dorothe Janes:
Okay and I feel it's important that we try and get some of the older ones before anything happens to them or we wouldn't have the records. They're thoughts and they're feelings.
Dave Janes:
But I think probably, as I mentioned earlier, I think Larry would be one of the people that you might say been a guiding light for many refuge managers out of Region 5 and out of Albuquerque also. And his exploits are many; well he has been coauthor of a book on his experiences in World War II as a top veteran, B29's flying over Japan. And so he's... Larry's a very meticulous person in terms of note keeping; I would suspect that he probably has notes on everything he's done from... I think he kept a daily diary every day since he started with the Service.
Dorothe Janes:
Okay. Well if I ever get back to Albuquerque I can do it or... We may have somebody in every region now doing these types of things.
Dave Janes:
But I'd say as far historical perspective I think Larry would be... Bill French...
Dorothe Janes:
He used to be in Region 3.
David Janes:
Yeah, he was in Region 3, transferred to 5, now he's living back home in...
Dorothe Janes:
I know him, I didn't know him really well but I know who he is. 30
David Janes:
Bill's, of course his kids are working for the Service too, and he's...
Dorothe Janes:
I'm planning on getting in touch with Art Hawkins very soon and Harvey Nelson. Those are two that I really want to get done because I know that Art is early 80's I'm sure and Harvey must be close to...
David Janes:
Don't know Harvey (unclear)?
Dorothe Janes:
But I want to thank you Dave, it was very nice of you to give me all this time.
Dave Janes:
Well, I'm glad you had the patience to hear me out!
UNABLE TO VERIFY: Ellen Vagner Janes (pg 1); Harvey Warner (pg 8); Helma Wolke (pg 11); Jim Lanakey (pg 12); Howard Woon (pg 11); Roger Steiner (pg 12); Howard Reiwoldt (pg 18); Lou Gordon (pg 16); Steve Grock (pg 19); Sid Kozak (pg 19); Emma Volke (pg 19); Herb Nelson (pg 19)
KEY WORDS: Dave Janes, great blue heron, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska, Corp of Engineers, Rampart Dam Proposal, Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, wildlife biologist, realty supervisor, forester, Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge, forester appraiser, Larry Smith, refuge manager, Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Richard E. Griffith, regional director, Thomas Horn, regional supervisor, George Gavutis, George Gage, Black Brook Addition, refuge hunting ban, PETA, New York Times, Time Life programs, Urban Wilds, Twin Towers, Larry Smith, Ed Moses, Tim McAndrews, Jim Smith, Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge, Wayne Gueswel, Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife Refuge, Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge, Seney National Wildlife Refuge, Eastern Neck Wildlife Refuge, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Bill Julian, surplus program, operating engineers union, Marion Ireland, Kenny Fletcher, maintenance technician, R.J. Reynolds, Lambert Wickes, Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, Success = Positive Imagery & Kinetic Energy (SPIKE) camps, Youth Conservation Corp (YCC), Rock Hall, Maryland, Reprisal ship, George Washington, East Shore, the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Steve Smith, Union Camp Corporation, Georgia Pacific, Denny Holland, Back Bay Refuge, U. S. Geological Survey (USGS), Virginia Carter, Patricia Gammon, Classification Wetlands, Lou Gordon, William "Bill" French, acquisition biologist, Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge, Cross Island National Wildlife Refuge, Petit Manan National Wildlife Refuge, 31
Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge, Walter "Walt" Quist, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), refuge acquisition, Currituck National Wildlife Refuge, Outer Banks, North Carolina, Devils Lake, Devils Lake Wetlands District, Sullys Hill National Game Preserve National Wildlife Refuge, Lake Alice National Wildlife Refuge, Denny Strom, Larry Veikley, Eugene "Gene" Williams, Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge, Nekoma Young Adult Conservation Corps (YACC) Program, Youth Conservation Corps (YCC), Northern Prairie Research, Paul Hartmann, Harvey Wittmier, Robert "Bob" Young, Cokeville Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, Region 6, Prairie Mountain Region, Region 3, Region 5, Marais des Cygnes National Wildlife Refuge, Jay Wolsky, National Wildlife Refuge system, Platte River, riparian habitat preservation, Centennial Land Trust, private initiative programs, federal acquisition programs, Upper Mississippi National Wildlife Refuge, Alma Tundra Swan Watch, Corps of Engineers, City of Alma, Wisconsin, Rieck's Lake, Fish and Wildlife Foundation, 501(c)(3), acquisition planning biologist, Stump Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge, Art Hawkins, Harvey Nelson, Lake Ardoch, Ardoch National Wildlife Refuge