Biologist Chronicles Adventures
By Ceil Sinnex
Jewell, who spent 14 years in the field saving threatened animals, brings her adventures alive in the book Gators, Gourdheads, and Pufflings: A Biologist Slogs, Climbs, And Wings Her Way To Save Wildlife due out this month.
The work was sometimes grueling, but Jewell says she never considered quitting. “What kept me going was the many hours and days of unbelievable beauty out in the wild . . . being part of nature and keeping it healthy,” she explains.
Unusual settings and animals she saved are colorful characters in the book. Take, for example, a 17-room haunted house that Jewell and two colleagues rented in Massachusetts. The house had a violent history as an Underground Railroad station where runaway slaves were recaptured. Strange phenomena added atmosphere during Jewell’s tenure there: the sound of human footsteps when the house was empty, unexplainable cool pockets of air on hot days and thunder sounds when the skies were clear. Jewell was the animal care supervisor at Laughing Brook Audubon Sanctuary, which tended animals that were either permanently injured or human-dependent. Quite a few animals needed more care than could be provided at the sanctuary, so Jewell brought them home to the haunted house.
One day, Sky King disappeared. Jewell was busy caring for a variety of other wild animals, such as a kestrel- (the smallest falcon) that she nursed to health and released to the wild. Had she succeeded in raising these animals to thrive in their natural habitats? Jewell often was not sure, but the animals sometimes showed her the answer. One day, Jewell heard a commotion outside the haunted house. “There sat Sky King, perched on the branch in the oak tree, with the kestrel hanging limply from his talons,” she writes. “Spellbound, I didn’t know whether to cry or clap.”
The sight of one of her avian charges eating another was dramatic, but Jewell’s thorough understanding of the food chain was a key to her success in the field. One of her early assignments entailed keeping captive snakes alive during winter by feeding them baby mice. “I was not worried, because I knew every animal in the food chain has to eat another to live,” she says.
But some aspiring scientists are discouraged by squeamishness. Asked her advice for such people, Jewell says: “Work with an expert. Find someone to mentor you and show you how to work with animals.”
For Jewell, born in New York City and raised in a suburb, the siren call to her life’s work came as if by accident. She drank clean water from a spring in the Shenandoah National Park during a family vacation when she was 16, and was transformed by the experience.
“Thus began my lifelong pledge to take care of the earth’s resources,” she writes.
Pete Seeger was the first person who influenced her, by including her in a tour of his sloop Clearwater where he gave a talk about the importance of keeping the earth’s water clean.
Jewell earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in wildlife biology.
“My research on bobcats as a grad student seems to have kept bobcats from becoming game animals in Connecticut,” she says, when asked her greatest accomplishment.
“The Everglades, where I spent many years, is still declining in health despite the efforts of my colleagues and me,” she laments; it is her biggest disappointment.
Among the animals she worked to save, wood storks remain on the federal Endangered Species List, and gopher tortoises became listed as threatened in Florida in 2006.
Jewell has worked for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, National Audubon Society and National Park Service. She traded the adventures of the field for a desk job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1998. Nowadays, she helps to decide whether a species gets added to the Endangered Species List and reviews policies affecting endangered or threatened species.
She is an active freelance nature writer. Her two previous books are Exploring Wild South Florida and Exploring Wild Central Florida. She has contributed to another book on related topics.
Jewell started writing for the Chronicle Newspapers in 2004.
Outside of a work setting, Jewell practices what she preaches. Her pet peeve? “People who destroy wildlife with no respect for them as living creatures. People should not fish unless they plan to keep and eat the fish,” she says. “When they catch the fish, they should kill it quickly and not let it suffer.”
New technology has not been a big help to the cause of saving wildlife and sometimes does harm, Jewell says.
“One GPS [global positioning system] takes a whole factory to build,” she explains. “Then it has to be transported thousands of miles to stores. It requires lots of batteries.”
Weekends find Jewell spending lots of time outdoors, enjoying what she discovered long ago at the spring in Shenandoah National Park.
Order Gators, Gourdheads, and Pufflings at www.buybooksontheweb.com, or call 877-BUY-BOOK. It costs $14.95.
Ceil Sinnex is a freelance writer with special interests in health care and history. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
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