Hellbender Working Lands for Wildlife Program Welcomes Newest Private Lands Biologist
Ben Wilson is the newest Hellbender WLFW Private Lands Biologist
The Hellbender WLFW program is growing, and so is its staff! The state of Alabama is one of the more recent participants in Hellbender WLFW, and the NRCS State office has so far enthusiastically supported the effort by helping develop needed infrastructure such as an approved practice list and fund pool ranking questions. Now all the program needs is more landowner participants, and that’s where Ben Wilson comes in. As of June, he has joined the team as the first Private Lands Biologist dedicated to providing outreach and technical assistance to producers in hellbender watersheds in northern AL. He will also be able to provide a boost in capacity for TN’s existing hellbender program by spending some time in hellbender priority watersheds in Middle TN, near the AL border.
Ben is a native of Florence, AL, so the rivers and streams of that area are very much his back yard. Thanks to many family outings and vacations on Shoal Creek, he developed a love of aquatic systems early in life. Ben also regularly attended summer camp as a kid at Camp McDowell, a place well known and much loved by many folks in the conservation community in AL. There, he not only got to spend time in the river, but he also learned about the incredible aquatic biodiversity that calls AL home, and was taught to see this richness as a rare gift that needs preserving and protecting.
Through many education and career twists and turns, he carried that love of AL rivers and that conservation mindset with him. After several different jobs and academic pursuits, and even a stint in the Army, it led him to pursue a degree in Environmental Biology from the University of Northern Alabama. Under Dr. Jeffery Ray, he got to take a deep dive into ichthyology and also got a taste for field work, which he enjoyed almost as much as playing in the creek as a child! After that he pursued graduate studies at Austin Peay State University, studying the genetics of the imperiled piebald madtom. Finally his journey led him home to Florence, where he has worked most recently as a biological tech at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge.
A chance meeting with staff from the Hellbender WLFW team at last year’s annual meeting of the Tennessee River Basin Network clued him in that the program might be expanding into his neck of the woods. He says that when he heard about Hellbender WLFW, he thought it sounded like the perfect marriage between his love of rivers and his passion for conserving biodiversity. When the announcement for the new PLB position came out, he jumped on it as quickly as he could, and the rest is history.
Ben knows he has his work cut out for him in this position. His grandfather is a farmer, so he knows something about their needs and concerns. He understands that farmers, especially in his region, operate on thin margins and have to think very carefully before taking a risk on implementing new and different practices. And while hellbenders might not be the most charismatic of wildlife ambassador species, Ben also knows that farmers want to be good stewards of their land, water and wildlife. He knows that win-win outcomes for landowners and wildlife are possible, and now it’s his job to help provide producers with the resources they need to achieve that.
Similarly to the Hellbender WLFW initiative in other states, Ben will help connect farmers with the NRCS technical and financial assistance they need to restore eroding stream banks, install riparian forest buffers, fence livestock out of sensitive streams, and implement on-field practices that will will help keep more soil on the field and out of the river. He says he’s looking forward to the challenge, looking forward to all the knowledge and expertise that he hopes to develop on the job, and most of all, looking forward to the day when he can visit the streams of his childhood and find hellbenders flourishing in them once again. The hellbender WLFW team is looking forward to that too, and we’re excited to have him on board. Welcome, Ben!
