Kennedy Center Annual Report
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CLEMSON UNIVERSITY JAMES C. KENNEDY WATERFOWL & WETLANDS CONSERVATION CENTER LEAD IN EDUCATION AND SCIENCE TOWARD CONSERVATION OF SOUTH ATLANTIC AND OTHER WETLAND 2020 ECOSYSTEMS annual report Thank you to our sponsors, cooperators, and friends: James C. Kennedy Mr. Tom Yawkey Mr. Dan Ray Yawkey Wildlife Foundation On our front cover James C. Kennedy and son, Jamie, after a successful hunt at Kennedy’s York Woods, Mississippi On our back cover Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy at York Woods, Mississippi FROM THE DIRECTOR FAIR WELL BUT NOT FAREWELL The years keep ticking by, and October 2020 the sidelines of gymnasia, when I was playing marks 70 fortunate ones for me. I give heartfelt basketball for St. Mary’s Catholic School (1962- thanks for these years, especially the past 1964), and she was a cheerleader for St. Mark’s half century since I met Loretta, we dated, we School during the same years. However, married and raised our family, and now plan we didn’t meet until after our high school to spend increasing time with our children graduation in 1968. and grandchildren following retirement after the hiring of a new Director of Clemson Being the frst child to attend university University’s James C. Kennedy Waterfowl and from both sides of my family, I fulflled my Wetlands Conservation Center. The position parents’ wishes and matriculated in fall was advertised in March but was frozen by 1968 to Marquette University in downtown university closure from COVID. I am told an Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in hopes of earning a excellent cadre of semi-fnalists have been degree in dentistry or medicine. However, I identifed for interviews. Meanwhile, all is really dreamed about studying waterfowl and well and progressing in the Kennedy Center, as wetlands, having admired the annual passages you’ll read in this 2020 annual report. of ducks, geese, and swans over my hometown on Lake Michigan. I also was a zealous hunter I’m also grateful for combatting two bouts with and fsher, but my folks demanded I needed cancer to increase my chances of realizing a profession that paid instead of only costing increased family time while continuing to like hunting and fshing. Back in those days, contribute professionally and personally in the only natural resources career known to me the coming years. Indeed, I view retirement, was becoming a game warden, which was not not as termination, but a transition to engage my passion. I didn’t know then that people meaningfully and enjoyably. Teaching my earned degrees in wildlife ecology and could grandchildren hunting and fshing will be specialize in waterfowl and wetlands through paramount. post-graduate studies. Some of the pioneers in waterfowl biology and management were This editorial may not be the appropriate place students and professors at nearby University to summarize remembered highlights from of Wisconsin-Madison, only 90 miles from my my time on earth, but I’ve decided to take this home. We didn’t have a clue! opportunity to archive the ‘fyways’ that led to my career in waterfowl and wetlands teaching, I honored my parents’ wishes and went to research, and service over the past near half Marquette University in September 1968. century. It refects fulfllment of my childhood I completed that fall semester but never dreams and is a prelude of some personal returned to the university because I was out dreams for continuance of waterfowl and of my societal and academic niches. I had wetlands science and conservation. My journey two options in January 1969: (1) enlist in the and dreams that came true for me may inspire military and likely go to Vietnam, or (2) seek a others to chase theirs. student deferment and enroll in the University of Wisconsin Center in Manitowoc—a bridge The early years program to four-year universities. I chose the My wife Loretta and I grew up in Two Rivers latter and learned the University of Wisconsin- and Manitowoc, Wisconsin, respectively, less Stevens Point had an excellent B.S. degree than 10 miles apart. I may have espied her on program in Wildlife Management. I enrolled in Point and matriculated there in fall 1969. I also 2020 ANNUAL REPORT 1 knew then that the University of Wisconsin- agriculture, lawns, golf courses, and ponds, but Madison (UW) had an excellent program in experience insufcient harvest for population Wildlife Ecology established by Aldo Leopold, management. the Father of Wildlife Management, but my dad would not allow me to attend UW because of I graduated with my M.S. degree from MSU in protesting and rioting there in the late 1960s. fall 1975. One of Dr. Prince’s Ph.D. students was déjà vu, été 2020? a Canadian, Dr. Bruce D. J. Batt, who became the Science Director of the Delta Waterfowl and Indeed, Point was an excellent choice for an Wetlands Research Station (DWWRS) in Delta, undergraduate education in natural resources. Manitoba, Canada, where decades of waterfowl Loretta and I continued dating during my professionals studied, including Drs. Batt and Point years, and we wed in September 1972. I Prince. Dr. Batt was conducting his doctoral graduated with my B.S. in Wildlife Management research at DWWRS on heredity of reproductive and Biology in December 1972 and bartended traits in mallards. Drs. Prince and Batt at the Stevens Point Country Club, while I encouraged me to pursue a doctorate through sought graduate school opportunities and took MSU, conducting my research on the legendary calculus during spring semester 1973. Delta Marsh through DWWRS. Loretta and I never feared opportunity for travel and Our fnal months in Point and years at Michigan exposure to new cultures and environments, State University because these were lacking in our parochial I applied to a number of universities across the backgrounds growing up. Thus, we traveled country while at Point but received no ofers to Delta in summer 1975, and I interviewed to until April 1973, when Dr. Harold H. Prince, a become a doctoral student under Dr. Prince, leading waterfowl biologist and professor at who was at Delta that summer on a sabbatical Michigan State University (MSU), contacted leave from MSU. I designed and conducted and ofered me a M.S. degree opportunity. We a feld experiment in the Delta Marsh (1976- were so happy I applied to Michigan State. In 1978) to test predictions of the ‘hemi-marsh’ September 1973, Loretta and I loaded most theory (Weller and Fredrickson 1973, The Living of our worldly belongings into a U-Haul Bird) in relation to wetland use by dabbling and Toyota Land-Cruiser and set sail from ducks and aquatic invertebrates (Kaminski and Manitowoc across Lake Michigan on the ferry. Prince 1981, Journal of Wildlife Management We had never driven through Chicago, Illinois, and The Auk). I’ll forever be grateful to so fearing major trafc chaos, we ferried across Harold, Bruce, Pete Ward (Director, DWWRS), the lake to Michigan. Across the lake, we Pat Caldwell (Ducks Unlimited-Canada), landed in Ludington, Michigan and drove to Bob Jones (Delta Marsh Manager, Manitoba East Lansing—home of MSU. Upon arrival to Branch of Wildlife [MBW]), George Richardson MSU, we learned there was no room in married (Winnipeg), John Larson (MBW), my feld and student housing. I don’t recall if Loretta lab assistants (notably Little Louie Ducharme, teared in sadness or strategic persuasion, but Pat Godin, Henry Murkin, Jef Nelson, and the housing manager fnally gave us a shabby Shirley Rushforth), and the workshop crew apartment in married student housing—1402 (Alf, Godfrey, Kevin, Les, Miles, Redge, and Spartan Village. Loretta always did her magic Russel) for either facilitating or supporting my in painting, sewing drapes, and decorating our doctoral degree program. Most of the students transient domiciles during our early migratory at Delta during the 1970s were/are leaders in years. the waterfowl and wildlife profession across Canada and United States. You know who At MSU, I studied nesting giant Canada you are, and Loretta and I are grateful for our geese at a time when waterfowl biologists friendship continuing strong over all these feared this race of geese may go extinct. years. Indeed, Delta was an initial destiny for Perhaps widespread translocation of these many of us! birds to urban environments in North America resurrected this race to burgeoning population levels that now live amid people, 2 KENNEDY WATERFOWL & WETLANDS CONSERVATION CENTER Starting a family, our fnal year at MSU, and The children garnered great educations in the returning to Canada Starkville Public Schools, and Loretta worked I must tell here that my beloved mother, for Starkville Public School Child Nutrition Jeanne, missed my doctoral graduation and Program for nearly 30 years. Our son, Matt, births of our two children; she passed in March graduated in Wildlife Science from Mississippi 1978 at 55 young years of life, while I was State and then earned his M.S. in wildlife traveling through Manitowoc back to Delta for ecology at State University of New York (SUNY) my fnal feld season of research. I received my in Syracuse, New York, under the late great Dr. doctorate in May 1979 and continued working Guy Baldassarre. Matt has been an employee in Dr. Prince’s lab at MSU on publications from of Ducks Unlimited, Inc. ever since graduating my dissertation and waterfowl i.d. modules from SUNY in 2005. Like the southern adage, for his waterfowl class and subsequently mine “some ‘akerns’ don’t fall far from the tree.” Matt years later. Our son, Matt, was born in Lansing, and his family reside in Fresno, California. Michigan in August 1979. I got a job with Ducks Shannon attended Mississippi State for a couple Unlimited Canada (DUC), so we embarked for years before completing her B.S.