Cal U. professor helps animals return from near extinction
Dr. Carol Bocetti, a professor at California University of Pennsylvania, holds a Delmarva fox squirrel near Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. The squirrel, once nearly extinct, is slated to be taken off the endangered species list because of the efforts of Bocetti and members of the squirrel recovery team.
Dr. Carol Bocetti, right, is assisted by Biological and Environmental Sciences student Delaney Martin. The pair tagged Delmarva fox squirrels, which can be found in the Delmarva Peninsula of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
Dr. Carol Bocetti, center, is surrounded by her students from the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at California University of Pennsylvania who accompanied her to the National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland, where they assisted with her research for the Delmarva squirrel recovery team. From left are Joel Redding, Chelsea Gilliland, Jerry Koza, Jason Cappello, Bocetti, Jacob Newbill, Nick Glover and Luke Gray.
Dr. Carol Bocetti is shown with a Kirtland’s warbler. The bird was once nearly extinct, but efforts are now underway to remove it from the endangered species list.
On exhibit at the Smithsonian Libraries in Washington, D.C., is the wildly popular (no pun intended) “Once There Were Billions: Vanished Birds of North America.”
The star of the exhibit is Martha, the last known passenger pigeon who died about 1 p.m. Sept. 1, 1914, in her cage at Cincinnati Zoo.
When Martha died, so did her species, which less than a half-century earlier was the most plentiful bird in North America until they were hunted into oblivion.
The exhibit also tells stories of the great auk, Carolina parakeet and heath hen, birds that disappeared as people altered habitats, changed the climate, overhunted and introduced predators.
Notably not among the growing list of extinct animals is the Kirtland’s warbler, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Carol Bocetti, a professor in the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at California University of Pennsylvania, along with a group of government agencies, nonprofits and concerned citizens.
The Kirtland’s warbler was one of the first animals to be placed on the endangered species list, along with the American alligator and bald eagle, when the Endangered Species Protection Act was passed in 1967.
When Bocetti joined the Kirtland’s Warbler Recovery Team in 1987, just 167 Kirtland’s warbler pairs remained.
Today, about 2,365 pairs of the sunny, yellow-breasted songbird can be found in Michigan, Wisconsin and Canada, more than twice the recovery team’s goal of 1,000 pairs.
“That’s what pulled me in. This was dire. This was a critically endangered bird, and I thought I could make a difference,” said Bocetti, a Peters Township resident who was tapped to serve as the Kirtland’s Warbler’s Recovery Team leader in 2006.
Endangered species have found a friend in Bocetti.
Over the course of nearly 30 years as a biologist and conservationist, she saved two species from extinction.
Bocetti is also an associate of the Delmarva Fox Squirrel Recovery Team, which she joined in 1995.
The large, silvery grey squirrel was another original member of the Endangered Species Act’s “Class of 1967.”
Its numbers plummeted precipitously as forests it depended on in the Delmarva Peninsula were cleared for agriculture and development. More than 90 percent of its range was eliminated, and by the mid-1960s, the squirrel’s survival was in doubt.
Bocetti and the recovery team, which includes game and fisheries employees from Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, along with professors from several schools, helped re-establish the squirrel populations in the peninsula area between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Delmarva fox squirrels now inhabit 28 percent of that area and number 20,000.
FWS recommended the squirrel be removed from the endangered species list, and it officially will be delisted as early as November.
It will be the 30th animal to be removed from the list after recovery, according to FWS.
Discussions also are underway to remove the Kirtland’s warbler from the list, although the bird is a conservation-reliant species.
“Since it’s conservation-reliant, it will always need human management. But I’m not worried,” said Bocetti, “because we’re building a partnership and once it’s established, we’ll have a conservation team to meet the future challenges of the species.”
The Kirtland’s Warbler Initiative, a program developed through a grant by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and run by Huron Pines, is working to create a network of stakeholders, landowners and volunteers in order to continue the intensive management practices that are necessary for the Kirtland’s warbler population.
“I think in five years or so, the Fish and Wildlife Service will consider delisting the Kirtland’s warbler, and when they do, it will be the first conservation-reliant species ever taken off the list, and I feel like I played a major role in that,” said Bocetti. “There are many people in the conservation community who think we’re crazy, who think we should not be talking about delisting a conservation-reliant species ever, but I think that’s dangerous and foolhardy. If you keep a species on the list after it has met its recovery goal, I think you’re asking for backlash against the entire act. The goal of every good conservation biologist should be to work themselves out of a job. There’s always another species you can turn to.”
Today, 2,240 animals and plants are listed as threatened or endangered worldwide.
It is estimated 30 to 50 percent of the world’s species are headed for extinction by the middle of the century.
Bocetti’s passion, energy and enthusiasm for protecting species is infectious (she drives a fuel-efficient station wagon with a “Dr. Wild” license plate, a gift from her husband), and her work is recognized nationally.
The Fish and Wildlife Service presented her with the Recovery Champion Award in 2011 and 2013.
The award is given to people who made outstanding efforts to help threatened or endangered fish, wildlife and plant species reach the point where they are secure in the wild and no longer need protection – the goal of the federal Endangered Species Act.
She is only the second person to receive the award twice.
Bocetti also was awarded The Wildlife Society’s Student Chapter Advisor of the Year in 2012, and Cal U.’s student chapter of The Wildlife Society was named the Chapter of the Year.
“I absolutely love working with the students. I’m at the point in my career where I want to give back and I enjoy mentoring in the classroom and in the field immensely,” said Bocetti, who joined the faculty at Cal U. in 2004.
Since 2006, her students (she calls them “my kids”) accompanied her in the field. They restore habitat, survey flora and fauna, work with endangered species, interact with the public, host events and attend conferences.
Bocetti, who had volunteered with the Florida Panther Project, always imagined she would work with large carnivores, like black bears.
But she was offered the chance to work with the Kirtland’s warblers, which weigh in at 14 grams (the equivalent of a quarter and two dimes) as a graduate student at Ohio State University and accepted, figuring “an endangered species is an endangered species.”
“And then I caught the birding bug,” she said. “I got pulled into the amazing group of people that were working on that species and the species itself. The bird has charm. You can’t leave them.”
Unlike Martha and the passenger pigeon, which numbered in the millions and ranged across North America, the Kirtland’s warbler has never been overly abundant and lives exclusively in a habitat of young, dense jack pine trees during the summer (it spends the winter months in the Bahamas).
Two factors led to the demise of the Kirtland’s warbler: alteration of its habitat and the arrival of the brown-headed cowbird, a nest parasite that egg dumps in other nests.
The cowbird hatches sooner than the Kirtland’s warbler, and the chicks fool the parents, who end up feeding the cowbird. The Kirtland’s warblers starve.
Efforts to aid the Kirtland’s warbler include trapping cowbirds and improving the habitat (which includes periodic burns needed to regenerate forests of young jack pines, which require fire to open their cones and spread their seeds).
In 1976, state and federal agencies teamed up to start the Kirtland’s Warbler Recovery Team, the one that Bocetti leads. It was the first recovery team ever appointed.
“I feel an obligation,” said Bocetti. “We created this problem for these animals and I feel a duty to do what I can to protect them. We have to be patient. If you think about it, it took us decades to destroy their habitats and cause the decline of these species. It really isn’t fair to think it would take less than decades to recover them.”