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It was one of those mornings when everything sparkles. A cold front had swept a week\u2019s worth of rain and clouds out of the Upstate and the sun was enjoying an unhindered gaze, dancing through a cool breeze and bouncing off of early-summer leaves and freshly filled lakes.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> Maria Whitehead pulled her Prius into the parking lot at Table Rock State Park<\/a> after driving from her home in Brevard, North Carolina, and got out to say hello, looking as if she was ready for a five-mile hike rather than a casual interview. APPLYING THE RESEARCH<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, I think I\u2019m an impatient scientist,\u201d she says. \u201cAt the end of the day, I think I\u2019m \u201cI spent about 10 years in avian research during and after my master\u2019s and my Ph. D.,\u201d she says. \u201cI spent a lot of time in the acquisition of knowledge about birds and about natural habitats, and I figured out during that time that what birds need and what a lot of our natural communities need is habitat protection. By working in the applied realm, by working in land conservation, I get to move from the acquisition of knowledge to the application of that knowledge.\u201d The rivers and forested wetlands run through her<\/b><\/p>\n Whitehead\u2019s environmental education began at home. Her family has lived in Back Swamp, South Carolina, just north of Florence, for 200 years on land that is now protected by a conservation easement with the Pee Dee Land Trust<\/a>. Growing up, the forested wetlands were her schoolhouse and her cathedral, full of lessons on flora and fauna and nurturing a deep, abiding reverence for the land. \u201cI think it is that sense of wonder, for those Working both sides<\/b><\/p>\n One of Whitehead\u2019s principal roles with the Open Space Institute is putting current, legitimate climate science into the hands of people trying to conserve the landscape, \u201cso they can make more informed decisions about how to prioritize land protection.\u201d \u201cA thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability A SHIFT IN SCIENCE<\/b><\/p>\n Ecology and conservation \u2014 and science in general \u2014 have become political footballs. The gap between the public\u2019s knowledge and opinions of science and science itself is widening, with climate change in the middle. But Whitehead isn\u2019t daunted. The stakes are too high, and conservation cuts across political persuasions. U.S.Geological Service marker at Caesars Head<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div> Here I am. Where are you?<\/b><\/p>\n Up on Table Rock Mountain, where the Cherokee say the Great Spirit takes his meals, the gray- and tan-streaked face of folded gneiss stands out like a rip in a curtain, a ragged transition between a scrubbed-blue sky above and hardwood greens below. Clinton Colmenares <\/b>is director of research communications at Clemson.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nShe is in her element \u2014 the fuel-efficient Prius, perfect weather, protected land. Whitehead has helped preserve 22,000 acres of land across South Carolina over the past decade, first as a program manager with The Nature Conservancy<\/a> and, since October 2016, as a senior project manager for the Open Space Institute<\/a>, a conservation organization based in New York state.
\nBut like the Pee Dee and Waccamaw Rivers that wind through the northeastern part of South Carolina, where Whitehead was reared, the flow of her career path from ornithologist to conservationist has been, she says, sinuous.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nAfter graduating from Davidson College, Whitehead went to Australia as an intern for the School for Field Studies<\/a>, which sparked an interest in birds. Back in the U.S., she got a master\u2019s degree in wildlife ecology and management from the University of Georgia and in 2003 a doctorate in forest resources<\/a> from Clemson, focusing throughout graduate school on avian ecology.
\nShe studied songbirds in the coastal plains and the mountains, but developed a specialty in the swallow-tailed kite, a bird the National Audubon Society<\/a> calls the most beautiful raptor on our continent. It\u2019s a tuxedoed bird, black and white, with a long, black, forked tail, like a svelte penguin that can fly. With a twitch of its tail the bird soars through swift, acrobatic flight with nary a flap of its wings. It is the only raptor that lives in colonies, nesting high in the cypress and hardwoods of the forested wetlands in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, until August, when it migrates to Brazil.
\nBut the beautiful bird\u2019s habitat is being lost to conversion \u2014 salt water flowing farther up the Waccamaw, the result of increased development and climate change. The salt is turning forested wetlands where kites live into brackish marsh and salt marsh. This type of habitat loss spurred a career change for Whitehead.<\/p>\n\n
\nan impatient scientist.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nShe hasn\u2019t outgrown her science roots. \u201cWe do a lot of education of other land trust groups and nonprofit organizations that deal with land protection and help them think about how to incorporate climate science into their operations and their daily program and work.\u201d She pairs that science role with direct involvement in land protection projects across the southeastern United States.
\nSome of those projects are large in scale. \u201cI may think about places that are most important for animal movements and look at places to protect over the entire eastern United States,\u201d she says. \u201cIn other cases, I might be looking at a very small local scale.\u201d
\nOne of those smaller-scale projects is just outside Conway, South Carolina, where floodplain forests protect communities by soaking up water like a sponge. In South Carolina, she reminds us, \u201cwe\u2019ve had tremendous flooding in the last several years.\u201d
\nThe floodplain forests also help secure drinking water, and they make incredible habitats for birds such as swallow-tailed kites and other aquatic organisms.
\n\u201cWe have certain natural habitats where the compounding benefits really add up, and it starts to be a very clear choice to invest in protection of those habitats.\u201d To make it an even clearer choice, the Conway site will also provide recreational areas for the community, with a series of trails that could eventually connect the downtown with Coastal Carolina University.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nWhitehead spent her childhood running through woods, building forts and catching snakes. \u201cWe raised a great horned owl at home and just had some really unique experiences that sparked a sense of wonder,\u201d she says. \u201cI think it is that sense of wonder, for those who can hold onto it into adulthood, in the natural world that keeps calling us back.\u201d
\nAn early immersion in the outdoors draws many conservationists to the field, Whitehead says. \u201cI developed a love for the natural world and a sense of place, a deep connection to that place where I was raised. I think it\u2019s that combination of an appreciation for nature and the natural world with a sense of place and a connection to that place that leads us to the realm of conservation.\u201d
\nAt Clemson, Whitehead worked with wildlife ecology professor Drew Lanham as her doctoral adviser. She was his very first doctoral student, and he calls her a rare bird herself, \u201cone of those students who come to be mentored and end up mentoring.\u201d He notes that \u201cher head and heart worked in tandem to inform the tasks her hands had to do. That connection of head to hand to heart is a mantra for me now.\u201d
\nWhitehead, he says, \u201ccame with all the tools necessary to do the bird work she’d been hired to do. However, as I watched her work through the years \u2014 hours afield in rough conditions, starting a family, giving back in after-school programs to an underserved community she’d adopted in Greenville, running marathons in her \u2018spare\u2019 time \u2014 it became evident that I was watching a rarer species than I would ever see through my binoculars.\u201d
\nIt was from Lanham that Whitehead says she learned about what it means to have a relationship with the land. \u201cHe has such personal stories that touched me, and I think have touched a lot of other people, about our emotional connection to place,\u201d Whitehead says.
\n\u201cFor part of me, land and that sense of what land means, relates back to my history and a connection to ancestors who actually depended on the land for their resources and for their livelihood. I think it means broader things to me as well,\u201d Whitehead says.
\nShe mentions a conservationist\u2019s creed, Leopold\u2019s ethic: \u201cA thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.\u201d
\n\u201cAldo Leopold\u2019s Sand County Almanac<\/i> is a bit of a bible in the way we think about a land ethic, and our relationship to the land,\u201d she says. Conservationists are called to think holistically about land use for humans, but also to include non-human species \u201cas part of a community that depends on the land.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nwho can hold onto it into adulthood,
\nin the natural world that keeps calling us back.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div>
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\nWhitehead identifies land that will be \u201cresilient,\u201d which she describes as \u201cmost likely to sustain natural communities and be reservoirs for biodiversity in the future.\u201d Not coincidentally, the most resilient areas are those less touched by people.
\nThe Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge<\/a> is one of those areas \u2014 55,000-acres spread across three Lowcountry counties: Horry, Georgetown and Marion. The refuge \u201cis a central and important place for swallow-tail kites in South Carolina\u201d with the highest breeding density of the birds in the state, Whitehead says.
\nIn the southern half of the refuge the conversion of fresh to salt water, due to a combination of drought, dams, water extraction and high tides, is squeezing the birds out. Protecting them isn\u2019t as easy as posting a sign and expecting the swallow-tailed kites to move in. \u201cThose birds are really tricky,\u201d Whitehead says. \u201cThey won\u2019t just go occupy any tract you\u2019d like them to use, even if it\u2019s a beautiful tract you\u2019ve protected for them.
\nWhitehead\u2019s expertise in the swallow-tailed kite is informing conservation strategies to protect the birds. Through one lens, she sees biodiversity in natural communities; through another, human communities. It\u2019s a duality that suits her.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nand beauty of the biotic community.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\n\u201cAt the end of the day, debating over the source of climate change doesn\u2019t really change the fact that a lot of us can see those changes and recognize that they\u2019re happening, and can talk about how to best prepare and how to face the ones we\u2019re dealing with,\u201d she says.
\nTen years ago, an important focus of conservation science was a carbon credit program; it had bi-partisan support, and conservationists thought it was imminent. The program would have reduced carbon emissions and created a new stream of revenue for land stewardship and protection.
\nSouth Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham co-sponsored carbon credit legislation with Joe Lieberman and John Kerry. In February 2010, he told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, \u201cIf you are 30 or younger this climate issue is not a debate. It\u2019s a value.\u201d The carbon credit program would create jobs and help the country become energy independent. As Graham said in the Times column<\/a>, \u201cWe can\u2019t be a nation that always tries and fails. We have to eventually get some hard problem right.\u201d
\nTwo months later, an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico failed catastrophically. The Deep Water Horizon spill became a rallying cry for environmental efforts and the carbon tax.
\n\u201cThat huge opportunity that everyone thought was going to happen was then gone,\u201d Whitehead says. Momentum was lost. \u201cWhen that passed, suddenly there was this shift, and the conversation wasn\u2019t as much about addressing carbon as it was about, \u2018All right, now we\u2019re seeing these impacts, and we gotta start thinking about adapting.\u2019\u201d
\nAdapting and science take money. And helping raise money is another part of Whitehead\u2019s job. Ever the optimist, she sees opportunities in the chaos.
\n\u201cI think we\u2019re seeing in some cases broader investment from foundations to backfill what could be gaps in funding. We have foundations and philanthropists thinking about what could be a short-term lapse in funds for science, funds for land protection,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nWhen Whitehead steps out of her car, birds come alive, as if knowing an appreciative friend has come calling. Birds, Whitehead says, remain central to her work as a conservationist.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s a red-eyed vireo,\u201d she says picking out a particular call. \u201cIt\u2019s saying \u2018Here I am, where are you?\u2019\u201d
\nShe points out a black-and-white warbler, spots an Eastern bluebird, hears a crow, a cardinal and, in the distance, a rooster. When asked to identify a distinctive bird sound, she says, politely, \u201cI hear a frog.\u201d The \u201cbless your heart\u201d is understood.
\nOrnithology is a distant study; after all, birds live above us. Sometimes, she says, raising binoculars to peer into the trees, she never even sees the birds.
\nSwallow-tailed kites are especially elusive. They almost never touch the ground, she says. \u201cFor anyone who\u2019s had a bird in the hand, it\u2019s a pretty powerful experience because they\u2019re so rare. They\u2019re a wonder.\u201d
\nPerhaps more than anything, Whitehead wants people to do their own running through the woods, building forts and catching critters \u2014 those experiences that spark a sense of wonder and reverence for the land. \u201cPeople have to have their own experiences to connect to the natural world,\u201d she says.
\nThat connection leads to action. Conservation is not a role solely for the professionals. Land owners can permanently protect their land or learn ways to manage it better, she says. Volunteering at public sites, like state or national forests or refuges, provides crucial support \u2014 politically and scientifically.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s good for folks to know that everyone has a role to play in conservation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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