Fathers on the Land

Frank Simms III (right) and IV (left) show off a trophy of their 2009 elk bow hunt.

Credit: USFWS

Fathers on the Land
For the wildlife law enforcement officers who safeguard 150 million acres of the National Wildlife Refuge System - protecting natural resources and ensuring visitor safety - dedication runs deep. For some, it runs blood deep: Their fathers, U.S Fish and Wildlife Service employees before them, instilled conservation values when they were young and launched a family tradition of protecting natural spaces.

Frank Simms IV, a wildlife officer at Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina, spent most summers of his youth in the mountains of Bellingham, Wash., hunting, fishing and camping with his dad, Frank Simms III, a Service law enforcement officer. “In a few instances,” he says, “we’d make contact with some poachers. He’d make a case” - issue a ticket - “and I’d think that was the coolest thing in the world. The ‘bad guys’ get caught.”

Later, when Simms was a high school student in Louisiana, he would look out for suspected hunting scofflaws through his binoculars and radio sightings to his dad for investigation.    

Simms - who protects public safety, stops poachers and enforces game regulations at his refuge - calls his Service law enforcement job “the best in the world.” Like the rest of the Refuge System’s 403 law enforcement officers, he takes wildlife protection seriously. “The main lesson I learned from my dad is to always be honest, be fair in your approach and how you deal with violators. That’s how I like to operate.”

Learning to Leave No Trace
Curtis Jones, who acts as both wildlife officer and assistant refuge manager at San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, got a double dose of environmental education growing up: Both of his parents worked for the Service.
“My dad was a biologist. I started following him around when I was very young,” says Jones, a hunter and avid fisherman. “I recall being signed up as a volunteer at an early age so I could do some site visits, see what he did on a daily basis, and get to explore a bit along the way. I couldn’t get enough of being outdoors. My father was always very conservation-minded. A lot of things we did growing up were non-consumptive: We camped a lot, did a lot of hiking. I was taught from an early age how to respect and conserve outdoors, leave no trace. ”

In college, he made wildlife conservation his career. When the opportunity arose, he added law enforcement to his refuge management duties, undergoing 31 weeks of training required of all Refuge System officers. Today, as one of the Refuge System’s 120 “dual-function” officers, Jones aims to pass down his conservation ethic, just as his father did.  “For me, becoming a wildlife officer is just one more way to help protect the environment, to ensure the things I enjoyed as a kid will be there for future generations, for my daughter to enjoy.”

Steve Strader, a wildlife officer at Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge and seven other refuges in Louisiana, credits his father, bird biologist Bob Strader, for instilling the conservation values that led to his career.

“I grew up hunting and fishing with my dad, mostly on national wildlife refuges in Mississippi. That’s where he first taught me about the conservation aspect of the wildlife world and our need to protect it, especially on public lands. A lot of those lands are disappearing, so the Refuge System is very important to him and to me.”
To enforce waterfowl hunting laws and ensure that hunters shoot only permitted species, Steve Strader must know how to tell one duck species from another. But he says it would be tough to surpass his dad in bird identification skills. “He’s just a big bird guru. No matter where we were, he would know what kind of birds we were looking at, and where to find them and where they come from. It was just fascinating to me. He’s a wiz at that.”

Sharing a Deep Sense of Pride
Jason Vehrs, a wildlife officer at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge in Alabama and nearby refuges, credits his dad, Stephen Vehrs, for Jason’s “deep since of pride in the work that we do, conserving land and wildlife for all Americans to enjoy.”
At Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and other nearby Florida refuges, where his father was manager in the 1980s, Jason says, “I used to ride around with him when he worked and saw everything from prescribed burns and wildfires to law enforcement actions like checking duck hunters and catching poachers. When I was 14 or so, he encouraged me to become a volunteer, doing everything from sea turtle nest surveys and water level management to feral hog and nuisance alligator control and marijuana eradication.

“I am a federal wildlife officer today, in large part, because I loved being with him and seeing him work when he wore his collateral duty refuge officer hat.”
Unlike the above- mentioned officers, Ray Portwood, a zone law enforcement officer in the South Columbia Basin, covering parts of Idaho, Oregon and Nevada, is a first-generation Service employee.

But partly through his influence, he’s hoping daughter Rachel may make theirs a two-generation Service family. Rachel, a junior at South Dakota State University, grew up living on a series of refuges where her dad worked, from Mingo in Missouri to Bald Knob in Arkansas to Izembek in Alaska. She’s now a SCEP (Student Career Experience Program) intern at Long Lake Refuge in North Dakota.

Says the elder Portwood, “She understands the importance of protecting wildlife habitat. She understands that refuges are very special places, set aside for wildlife first.”
“It makes us proud,” says Portwood. “She’s really passionate about wildlife. We think she’ll enjoy her career and the places it takes her.”