“A Vast System of Wildlands”. A Conversation with Francis Mauer
By: U.S.Fish Wildlife Alaska
Tags: Alaska, Conservation, History, Wildlife Conservation

Francis Mauer 📸 USFWS

When did you join the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service?

1974

What do you think people would find most surprising about your job?

Probably the degree of trust that my supervisors accorded me. I was able to work sometimes directly with legislators on ANCILA, whether it was accompanying Congressmen on tours or dealing with committee members and staff when I was detailed to Washington. We had to be quick and nimble during the evaluation and planning processes, and my supervisors gave me almost free rein to handle whatever came up. That kind of latitude is rare in a government agency, particularly for someone just starting out in his career. Of course, there would’ve been repercussions if we had screwed up.

How do Alaska’s wild places sustain you?

Really, it all goes back to my childhood wonderment about the Great Plains prior to European contact. Much of Alaska still has a primeval character to it. The land affords a great solitude here, and that’s very rare in today’s world. You can be dropped off by an airplane on a gravel bar in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the plane leaves, and the silence is almost magic. It’s as though the essence of the wild soaks deep into your soul.

What are your foremost concerns about Alaska’s wildlife resources?

I’m worried about maintaining the ecological integrity and wildness of our protected lands over the long term. The entire notion of predator control, for example, concerns me. To say we have to kill grizzlies and wolves to assure high moose and caribou populations reflects backward thinking. We should learn the lessons from Yellowstone, where the re-introduction of wolves has resulted in more biodiversity and ecological stability, not less. And for bears, there’s research indicating they are critical to recycling nutrients in riparian and flood plain ecosystems. They grab salmon and haul them out into the woods to eat them, and the salmon scraps and bear feces enrich the entire area. If you kill most of the bears in a drainage to ramp up the number of moose, the result may be an artificially high number of moose for a while, but then the moose may decline precipitously because forage quality has decreased due to reduced nutrients that are transported by bears.

When I’m not working, I’m — -

Well, I’m retired, so “not at work” pretty well sums up my life. I spend a lot of time in airplanes and remote places, and I work around the house. I’ve also found that retiring from a government agency essentially restores your civil liberties, so now I can speak openly. I advocate for wilderness through my association with Wilderness Watch, which monitors the stewardship of national wilderness areas.

What’s the greatest misconception non-residents have about Alaska?

They tend to misunderstand wildlife productivity in the northern latitudes. It’s much lower in temperate areas. It takes a long time for a tree to grow in the Alaskan interior, and tundra ecosystems are especially sensitive — fragile, even. When the caribou are aggregated into huge herds following calving on the coastal plain, it can create a misconception of their relative abundance. For most of the year, they’re widely scattered across a very large area. And in fact, there have been significant declines in some areas, due in many cases to overhunting. There once was a very large herd that migrated in the area between Fairbanks and Whitehorse. It numbered about 500,000 animals in the 1920s, and in 1972 it had dwindled to only about 6,000 animals. Excessive hunting during the 1950’s and 1960’s was a major cause. All hunting of that herd was banned for several years, starting in 1973. It’s taken nearly a half century for the herd to reach 80,000 today, which is still much lower than what it once was. While there’s this myth of boundless resources in Alaska, our wildlife are extremely vulnerable, and we have to be careful.

What’s your most treasured memory of Alaska or your job?

In the early 1980s, I was part of a team conducting a census of the Porcupine caribou herd on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain. We worked out of an abandoned DEW Line station that had an airstrip. And one night — this was in summer, when stays light 24 hours a day, I walked out from the airstrip with my binoculars, and scanned from the northwest, and then did a 180 degree rotation to the south east. There was a solid wall of caribou on the horizon throughout the entire rotation. I could hear a rumbling sound from vocalizations between the cows and their calves and the churning of hooves. The sun was a low in the northern sky, the light was golden, luminating this great mass of wild animals with the Brooks Range in the background, its glaciers and snowfields were bathed in gold — it was a stunning sight I’ll never forget. It reminded me of what used to occur when millions of bison roamed the Great Plains near where I was born.

What advice would you give people who want to work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service?

The Service has an extremely important mission, and I was proud to be a part of it. I’d say you really have to have the desire — the passion ­– to protect wildlife and wildlife habitat to work for the agency. But you must get out on the land rather than sit behind a computer screen. You can’t let your senses become dulled by technology and social media. You need to get out and see and experience the real thing, and decide if it’s right for you.

What wildlife species particularly inspires you?

I’ve spent quite a bit of time with caribou, and I’d have to go with them. They’re remarkable creatures in so many ways, and their adaptations are likewise amazing. They rely on movement to optimize sparse food resources over a vast landscape. So they’re great travelers — the mileage champions of the terrestrial realm. Caribou are able to go the longest distance per calorie of energy. It’s due to a fascinating combination of biochemistry, digestive system, musculature, skeletal structure, insulation, individual and herd behavior.