Carrol Henderson: Watching Over Wildlife
By Pamela Eyden, Outdoor Writer
Carol Henderson’s success is measured in wildlife perserved.
As supervisor of the Minnesota’s Nongame Wildlife Program he protects the birds and wildlife we love.
Take trumpeter swans. These birds have a wingspan of about seven feet and are the largest water bird on earth. When Henderson wrote a conservation plan for them in 1981, they were gone from Minnesota for 100 years. Their habitat had been turned to farmland and they’d been overhunted for their elegant white feathers. After 30 years of persistence in the trumpeter swan project, more than 2,000 adult birds nest in Minnesota’s wetlands and the population has doubled in the last five years alone.
You can see this success in the ice-free waters on the Mississippi River at Monticello, Minn., in the winter.
Henderson is a manager, ecologist and full-time spokesperson for all the state’s wildlife that isn’t hunted or fished — the “non-shootable species,” he calls them. He’s in charge of conservation, education and communication, and oversees dozens of projects all over the state, from Blandings turtles and Karner blue butterflies to red-shouldered hawks and common loons, from the Pine to Prairie Birding Trail to the state’s 30 Wildlife Management Areas.
The Nongame Wildlife Program started small, very small, in 1977.
“I had a $30,000 budget and was supervisor in charge of nobody,” he said.
The program struggled along until one year a legislator successfully pressed for a little box to be added to the bottom of the state tax return, giving taxpayers the option of donating money to the program. The Nongame Wildlife Check-off, nicknamed the “chickadee check-off,” brought in $500,000 the first year.
Since then the department has grown to an annual budget of $2 million and a staff of 18, including six field biologists. It is regarded as one of the best, most innovative programs in the country.
“It’s been fun over the years to see how other states look over our shoulders at what we’re doing,” he said.
The annual volunteer Loon Count of particular interest to Henderson this summer. Adult loons spend their winters in the Gulf of Mexico. Everyone is anxious to see if the same number come back this year. During the oil spill Henderson was one of the experts called upon to speculate about possible effects of the oil on Minnesota’s state bird. He’s become a very popular go-to guy for anyone with questions about wildlife.
You never can tell what you’ll see. One day, while driving near Thief Lake Wildlife Management Area, he saw what seemed to be a really big goldfinch pecking at something at the side of the road. It turned out to be an atypical flycatcher, pecking at the scat of a timberwolf. What would a flycatcher want with the remains of a wolf’s dinner? Flycatchers eat bugs, not meat. Closer examination showed the bird had been tweezing out the undigested fur from a rabbit, which it probably used to build its nest.
One of Henderson’s pet projects came to fruition last year with the “Digital Photography Bridge to Nature” program, which puts digital cameras in the hands of third to ninth graders and sends them outside on “photo safaris.”
This summer the program will provide another 40 digital photography workshops to 1,000 school teachers, each of whom will each reach 60 students. The safaris are a way to teach about biology, botany, ecology and more.
“It’s contagious,” he exults. “Put a camera in kids’ hands and their personalities change. They pay attention to what’s around them. They want to take good photos. It creates many of those ‘teachable moments’ we’re always looking for, and it gives kids incentives to get outside to enjoy nature.”
To reach people another way, Henderson has written 11 books, five for the DNR, including the ever-popular *Landscaping for Wildlife and *Wild About Birds: the DNR Feeding Guide, which have earned a quarter of a million dollars in royalties, all of which has gone to the Nongame Wildlife Program.
Henderson admits that it’s hard to know where his work life stops and his personal life begins. He and his wife Ethelle have led 47 birding tours to Central and South America, and Africa since 1992. He also wrote field guides about the birds, mammals, insects and amphibians of Costa Rica.
How has he managed to do all this?
“When I see an opportunity to do something, I channel all my energy into making it happen,” he explained.
That’s what has made him a success.
