Managing Human-Wildlife Conflicts

B. Welcome to Communities That Work, a podcast from KRFC 88.9 FM Fort Susan Collins, devoted to issues, ideas, programs, and people, shaping life in northern Colorado and beyond. You'll hear guests from all walks of life discuss the variety of ways communities address their opportunities and concerns. You can find more episodes of Communities That Work at KRFCFM.org or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Richard Cox, your host for this episode of Communities That Work. Headquartered in Fort Susan Collins, the National Wildlife Research Center is a research unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture devoted to resolving issues caused by the interaction of wild animals and society. For more than 25 years, the Center's multidisciplinary team of scientists has been developing innovative approaches to addressing human wildlife conflicts, wildlife damage, nuisance and pest animals, wildlife disease, invasive species, overabundant wildlife, and overall ecosystem health. Today I'll be talking with its director, Jason Suko. I want to welcome to the Communities That Work Studio today. Jason Succo, he is the director of the National Wildlife Research Center. That's a research unit of the USDA AFIS Wildlife Services Program. And they are dedicated to finding solutions to challenging wildlife damage management problems related to agriculture, natural resources, property, and human health and safety. Sort of that interface between animals and people. I want to welcome you, Jason. Thank you, Richard. Glad to be here. Yeah. I had the opportunity to tour the National Wildlife Research Center at the CSU at Colorado State University of Foothills campus a number of years ago, and I was impressed beyond belief. And so it's a real honor and pleasure for me to welcome you to the studio and talk about the important work that you all do there. And so let's get started and say, what is the National Wildlife Research Center and, you know, where you're located and all that? So we're located on the CSU Foothills campus. It's a 43-acre facility where we have multiple facilities and multiple research buildings and outdoor pens that are very specialized. They're unique in the entire world for our capabilities. And we're very blessed to be a part of the Fort Susan Collins community. It's a great place to live, great place to work for our staff. The National Wildlife Research Center is, as you stated, is part of wildlife services. We have the research side and the operations side, and we fall underneath the animal plant and health inspection service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Okay. And I wasn't aware until last night looking at your website that it's not just the one facility.

Here in Fort Susan Collins, there are field offices around the country, correct? Yeah. We're happy to say that we have seven different field stations all across the United States, and they all have their own little specialty. In addition to our seven different field research stations, we also have Pocatello Supply Depot, which helps supply the products that our researchers develop to the Wildlife Services Operation Staff and to the public for sale. We have staff even stationed in Guam in Puerto Rico. When I mentioned the different field stations and the specialties, a couple of examples would be we have a field station in North Dakota that focuses on blackbirds. We have a field station in Starkville, Mississippi, which focuses on aquaculture. We have a field station in Hawaii that focuses on invasive species. And then, of course, we have a couple of others that have specialties as well. So we have about 150 staff all together spread out all across the country and doing various types of research. And who are those 150 people? What areas of expertise and areas of study does it encompass? Oh, wow. That's a good question. I mean, you don't have to give me an exhaustive list, but, you know. So we are all over the board in a good way. The way that I like to say it is that we're small, but we're mighty. And we have a lot of different research project areas. The various examples would include we have rabies, a whole research section that focuses on rabies. We have one that focuses on wildlife disease, chronic wasting disease, genetics, human dimensions. Those are just a couple of small examples, and I could probably give you more examples as we go on. Yeah, so you've mentioned sort of the concepts, your main areas of concern. Spin that out a little bit. Give us some examples of some of the, you know, maybe it's tied to some of the field offices. You mentioned, the Blackbirds in North Dakota. And I know when I toured the center. there was discussion about feral pigs in Florida. So try to give a little bit of a flavor for these problems that you try to solve. Yeah. You did a really good job in the introduction in the areas that we work in with, you know, protecting agriculture, protecting property, protecting human health and safety, protecting natural resources. Our key objective is to... work in the applied science area. So our scientists are working every single day to come up with tools, techniques, methods to solve wildlife conflict. And it's also heavy in the wildlife disease arena, too. Our agency, wildlife services, our whole mission. is dedicated at that wildlife agriculture interface. So some examples that we work with are Mississippi Field Station, aquaculture. There's a very strong catfish industry in the south. There's also oysters and clams and things like that. There's various bird species like cormorants, pelicans, things like that that cause quite a bit of damage to those aquaculture facilities. So our staff are coming up with integrated.

approaches and innovative methods to reduce the damage to help those producers out. You mentioned feral swine. Feral swine are invasive species. And they're very problematic on all fronts, you know, agriculture, property, human health and safety, natural resources. So there's a big interest by Congress. There's a big interest by a lot of entities to help resolve the conflicts that they create. So there's a whole unit that's dedicated to coming up with an integrated approach to manage feral swine all across the country. And I would imagine management can look a lot of different ways, from controlling population to diversion. Give me some ideas here. Yeah, no, you're going down the right path, Richard. Management usually involves a couple of different things. And in wildlife services, we always talk about leveraging an integrated approach. Unless if it's an invasive species, we're not talking about eliminating populations. We're talking about managing conflict, managing disease. The primary methods about and how to go about that is harassment or dispersal, habitat management, so you make it less desirable. And a quick example for that is we do a tremendous amount of airport work. We have an aviation research center in Sandusky, Ohio, that focuses on that. So in that example, we want airports to be less available for wildlife there. And then population management. Because you don't want birds getting sucked into jet intakes. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I think I heard something about scare devices at airports. So there's a lot of different types of scare devices out there. When we talk about scare devices, you can talk about pyrotechnics. They have a thing called a scary man, which is a simulated inflatable thing that goes off on a timer. And they come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes when our staff use them, between them going out and doing harassment, they'll actually take their shirt or whatever and put it on the scary man. So it simulates them when they're not there. It's like the next level of a scarecrow. Yeah, it is. It actually is. They can come with sirens and all sorts of things on time. on top of that. They have propane cannons is another type of diversionary, which is auditory. They have sirens. Yeah, there's a lot of, in each of those categories that I talked about, Richard, there's a lot of different methodologies that we use. In some of them.

are actually species-specific too. When we talk about harassment, lasers is another technique that we'll use on certain species in low-light conditions and not all birds see light the same way. And that's what our research program does, is they go through the various tools and techniques and provide information to the wildlife services operation staff and the public to be able to say, look, we went through the research. this type of laser works for these birds or this type of technique works for these mammals, et cetera, et cetera, in these conditions. And there's a whole other thing that comes into play with that because wildlife biology of the animals themselves matter time of year. For example, migratory birds. Migratory birds are more easily harassed and moved in the spring. And in the fall, when they're in the process of moving back and forth to their migratory ground, if it's in the winter or in the summer, now they're more static and there's more challenges associated with that. And you have to use additional techniques to help solve conflicts with them. So it sounds like you need to have a really detailed and comprehensive understanding of whatever species you're working with before you kind of go out and try to find an applied technology, building a better mouse trap for lack of a better term. To address that. Exactly. And that's why we have so many specialty areas. That's why we have a whole project area that's in the rabies and a whole project area that's in the feral swine and a whole project area that deals with genetics, et cetera, et cetera, is there is so much. information to know in that little area. In our projects, they cross-collaborate a lot depending on what the particular problem is to share the knowledge and the resources to help come up with creative solutions. How does an issue, a project, wind up on your desk? What's the chain there that, who are you going to call? You're going to call National Wildlife Research Center. And they'll get their team on it. That's an excellent question. And it's, to be honest, it comes from all over the place. One of the main places that those... ideas or I should say questions where the questions come from. Every five years, the National Wildlife Research Center, we do what's called a research needs assessment. And it's a survey. That survey goes out to all of our wildlife services operations and national programs to ask them what they see. You know, since our program, Wildlife Services, is the national leader in wildlife damage management. you know, it stands to reason that they have a pretty good idea of what the needs are for more tools. In addition to that, we have, we work very closely with the states, and there's a national group called Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies with the state wildlife departments belong to.

We provide them the survey as well so we can hear from them. One of the things that I didn't mention earlier that's really important to mention is that wildlife services is non-regulatory. And we work along with our federal partners and we work along with our state. partners as we do operation and research because we don't have direct management authority. We have the knowledge on how to work with various wildlife and how to solve the problems. And when it comes to the authority aspect, that's where we collaborate closely with our state and federal partners in the wildlife arena. Ah, so you're like the idea of folks, and then it gets... the operational end of it is done out in the field. Correct. I see. Correct. Yes. So you sort of answered this question already, the types of agencies or groups you work with. Does it like extend all the way down to, you know, maybe the municipal level or do you ever work with private groups? Yes, all the time. We work right down from the individual, from somebody that has a goose nest in the doorway. To the farmer that has a European starling problem at a dairy farm, to tribes, to the cities that might have a turkey vulture roost problem or a crow roost problem on the capital to Fortune 500 companies. It's from A to Z. We work with railroad companies, telecommunication companies, wind farms. pretty much wherever wildlife are causing concerns or damage or disease issues, we get called in to provide some advice or some assistance somewhere along the lines, either operational or via research. I suppose you have new projects and new concerns that come in, but you probably have a huge database of things that you've already figured out. So when somebody calls and you go, okay, I'm going to say B for Blackbird, you just pull that plan right off the shelf and say, here's what to do, right? So we do in a lot of aspects. There's a couple of points there. First of all, our scientists are very well published. and very well published in high-quality journals. So whenever they go from the process to, from the beginning to the end, the cradle to the grave is sometimes what I say is they come up with an idea, they develop the idea, they have staff, a system for the research project, they execute, and then when they're done, they publish and they go through the peer review process to have their research put in the various journals. When there's things that are specific to our operations folks or our national program folks, they go above and beyond and they reach out to those state directors and other people to share that knowledge more quickly so that they can implement it. You know, I remember way back when the research came out about grass height at the airports. And that was shared out pretty quick in regards to reduce.

birds at airports based on grass height. Well, that's a good thing to know, especially if you're involved in the flying public. There's other examples, too. But that's the biggest way is through our publication process in all the various journals. Okay. Well, I'd like to sort of give the people who are listening to this a sense of the wow wonder that I experienced when I went through your facilities and I saw some of the specialized. Areas where you were working, and I heard about some of the really fascinating issues that came up in the creative ways. That's what really impressed me was you really kind of have to be innovative in attacking some of these problems. Give me some ideas of some of the more interesting or unusual projects that have come down the pike. Oh, the list is long, Richard. You can't play favorites. I know. I'll give you an example of something that's actually happening here. And right now, we have one of our research-grade scientists. I believe he's on his way back, and he's on his way back delivering a couple of quatties. And quatties are the easiest way to describe it. They're like a raccoon. And he's bringing back a handful of quadi's. This from in like... Central America. They're traditionally from Central America. I think I've seen them, yes. Very good. In Costa Rica. Yes, yes. He's bringing back a handful of quadis to the research center. And they came up with the idea of leveraging quadis to locate brown tree snakes in Guam. There are places that are really challenging and to explore. And they believe that they could train Kuatis because Kuatis are very athletic and very curious, but they believe that they could train Kuatis to climb trees where the brown tree snakes spend 80% of their time in the tree tops to be able to go after these brown tree snakes. You're training like the... The killer Kuanis is gone. I don't know if they're going to kill them, but they'll certainly help us find them, which is a big part of the problem. Because it's not necessarily part of their diet, right? Right. The thing about brown tree snakes is since they're arboreal and they spend 80% of their time in the canopy, and we're talking about jungle canopy in Guam, it's very, very hard to locate. And then when you do locate, then what? You know, when they're up? you know, 60, 70 feet in the air. So there, it's really, really important to us that the brown tree snake. does not get off the island of Guam and get to Hawaii because when brown tree snakes landed in Guam, they devastated the ecosystem with the birds and the various reptiles and other critters there, which was really unfortunate. So they're trying to reintroduce some of the endangered species that were at Guam.

And brown tree snakes are a limiting factor. So it's twofold. One is to continue to work towards establishing some of the native animals there. And the other thing is to prevent brown tree snakes from getting off the island and getting to Hawaii, which would be devastating. Yeah. So. One of the issues that you deal with is invasive species. Correct. They may be fine in their native habitat, but they get transferred someplace else and wreak havoc. in the local ecosystem. That's correct. If I may, I'll give a really good example of a different invasive species project that we wrapped up last year that demonstrates creativity and the diversity that the National Wildlife Research Center works in and the collaborative effort is the island of Wake or Wake Atoll is owned by... The Department of War, the only entities that can get out there are the military and contractors. They had an issue with rodents being out there, particularly one rat species. And they attempted, with a multimillion dollar investment, they attempted to eradicate. rats off the island because the island is strategically important for the Department of War. And the short version is that when they did the rat eradication, they were successful with one species and they weren't with another and they wanted to go back and revisit and try to take that species off. While we were doing the research as to why the original one failed, another rat species landed on the island. So we had to figure out. if the current toxicants and things would work to eliminate that. Through working through the Air Force, through working through Fish and Wildlife Service, and other NGO groups, we were successful to put together a team to eradicate both species. And our rodents project was very active in that. And then our genetics project was very active in that because they leveraged environmental DNA to verify. that the project was successful. So by taking water samples and soil samples and strategic locations, we could determine that we were successful in other methods in an integrated approach to determine that that whole project was successful in that collaborative effort in eradicating those two rat species from Wake Atoll. Well, one of the things I was going to ask you is do you ever have to revisit a problem that you thought was solved? because there's been adaptation as happens in wildlife. Like maybe the birds at the airports wake up one day and they just say, hey, that scary man is like the guy out in front of the car wash. And we're not scared of them anymore. So you have to come up with a different strategy. Absolutely. You know, in the example that I just gave for Wake A Toll for when they implemented it is exactly what happened. And we had to go back.

to do the research to find out why that failed to adjust. And I'll use the example that you just used for that scary man. That's exactly why we leverage an integrated approach. And that's exactly why we try to come up with new techniques. We have a whole research project area that is related to repellence. both repellents for birds and mammals. And to come up with visual repellents is different than to come up with taste repellents after that scary man fails, then what? So, yes, we constantly have to reinvent when wildlife want to try to find the whole adage of where there's a well, there's a way. We have to counteract that as the wildlife are trying to adjust to what we're trying to do. So we've talked about rats. We've talked about feral pigs. We've talked about arboreal snakes. What is the absolute breadth of wildlife? You know, like what's the smallest organism you work with or try to? mitigate its impact. And then on the other end of that spectrum. Well, if I'm going to go for small, I'm probably going to use High Path AI and use a virus. Oh, wow. So you can't get much smaller than that. With High Path AI, there's a direct connection between wildlife and agriculture, primarily our poultry industry. And there are situations across the United States because of the way the flyways are, because of the way the species are, that there is some crossover between our migratory birds and our poultry houses. So we have staff. that are going out there and trying to mitigate that to keep those migratory birds away from those poultry facilities so they're not transferring high path AI. While we're doing that, we're doing research as well to determine which species of migratory birds are more likely or not at all connected to high path AI transference. There's a lot of reasons why... poultry houses across the United States become infected with high path AI. Wildlife is just one of many. And AI is avian influenza. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Artificial intelligence. Yeah. Highly pathogenic avian influenza. Thank you, Richard. Which is a really big deal in the poultry industry. Millions and millions and millions of dollars. Yeah. So it is a big deal. And again, wildlife is just one. piece of all of that, but with our specialty in wildlife services, you know, both on the operational side and on the research side, if we have opportunities to help mitigate that and help our poultry producers out, we definitely want to do that.

It also helps with our consumers across the board because remember when egg prices were high a couple years ago. A big reason associated with that was high path AI. So, you know, there's economics that comes into this sometimes too. And it's a small piece, but it's an important piece nonetheless. Do you have any specialized facilities either at your headquarters here in Fort Susan Collins or out of your satellite facilities that you won't find anywhere else? And maybe it's something you had to create from scratch just to solve an issue. We have a number of specialized facilities. I don't know if they're one of a kind, but I would say they're very limited in the nation and probably limited in the world. We're lucky to have four Snees, and Snee is a simulated natural environment. We talked about brown tree snakes. One thing that's really cool about... those very, very large rooms is you can change the humidity in them. You can make them rain. You can change the daylight. So you can create a simulated natural environment for whatever species that you want to use to put in there. And the reason that we have four is so that you can have a control and then you can have the study area. So a lot of animals run through those. There's a number of sneeze all across the United States at various universities and other research facilities, but still they're limited. and how many there really are and the size of them matters too. One of the things that we also have at both here at our Fort Susan Collins campus and at other facilities is we have aviaries. When I talked about the facility in Starkville, Mississippi, which is really neat, is that the aviary there. actually has ponds underneath so that we can put catfish in those ponds and then put in white pelicans or put in cormorants, and we can do various studies with those birds that are enclosed in that high netted area that those birds are at and study what they're doing and come up with some solutions. That's pretty unique. I don't... I think there's too many aviaries out there that are designed for research that have large ponds underneath. So that's pretty neat. Well, yeah, I would imagine the closer you can simulate that natural environment, the more reproducible your results are going to be when... applied in the wild. That's exactly it. The way the national wildlife research is set up is that each of those project areas, there's different components to them. So we have the ability to have our...

animal facilities and we have an amazing animal care staff here in Fort Susan Collins and at Logan, Utah and in Florida and other places that help take care of those animals while they're on research. But where it works out where it's super cool is that the scientists come up with an idea and then they get to test that idea in those simulated environments or aviaries or animal room spaces. And then once they think they're on to something, there's laboratory spaces that they have that's assigned to them if need be. And then they're able to take it to the field to fully test it. And then with that data, determine if they have a new applied science that could be shared, you know, with the Wildlife Services operation and the public to help resolve wildlife conflict or wildlife disease issues. I think you've given a pretty good... overview of the breadth of activities at the National Wildlife Research Center. What's your background? So I have an interesting background. I grew up in northern Wisconsin. I grew up on a dairy farm. And growing up on a dairy farm, I've always had an interest in... wildlife. So early on, I already had the nexus between wildlife and agriculture. I was part of 4H. I was part of future farmers of America. And then I went on to get my wildlife degree from the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. And then from there, I kind of be bopped around. I started out as a seasonal wildlife technician and then became a wildlife biologist. And I was fortunate enough to later on in my career to become the state director of Pennsylvania, the state director of Minnesota, the state director of Wisconsin. And then the western regional director, which oversees half of the United States for operations. And then I went on to become the National Wildlife Research Center director. So I've had a very... blessed career with all the great people and all the great projects that I've been able to work on. What do you find to be the most rewarding aspect of working at the center? So I would have to say to me the most rewarding is the ability to make a difference, to have to be surrounded by so many great staff that care so much, that care so much about the mission, about coming up with creative ideas. and helping out our operation staff and helping out the public in solving some of those problems. It's very rewarding. If there's a message you could impart to our listeners right now regarding the National Wildlife Research Center, and one thing that you hope people would take away from this discussion, what would that be? So that would probably be that Wildlife Services National Wildlife Research Center focuses on applied science? in that we develop tools and methods to help resolve wildlife conflict and wildlife disease issues to protect agriculture, to protect natural resources, to protect property, and protect human health and safety. Is there anything that we've overlooked in this discussion?

I don't believe so. I could probably talk for hours. Yeah, and I could probably ask questions for hours, too. But people have limited detention spans these days. I really want to thank you for coming by Jason Succo, the Director of National Wildlife Research Center. It's part of the USDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, APHIS Wildlife Services. And you're just making sure we all can just get along. Thanks a lot for coming by. Thank you, Richard. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to communities that work. Like what you've just heard, check out more episodes from our other podcast hosts, as well as more public affairs and music programming from KRFC 88.9 FM in Fort Susan Collins, Colorado.