 Hey guys I'm Abigail Lee. I'm a 4-H state ambassador this year and I'm from Covington County and today I have the privilege of interviewing Mr. Derek Colbert. He is a district wildlife biologist for the Kinect National Forest and I'll let you take it from here Derek. Thank you Abigail. Good morning. Good morning. I'll just start off you thankfully sent me a couple questions ahead of time so I appreciate that. I was able to prepare a little bit and I see here your first question was what was my major in college? So kind of how did I get into this position? I received my bachelor's of science in forest resources with an emphasis on wildlife management in 2011 and I received that from the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia and decided close to the end of that degree that I wanted to keep going and try to pursue an even higher degree so I actually followed that up with a master's of science in 2013 from Warnell as well, state at the University of Georgia for another two years to complete that degree and since then I've had a couple of great experiences, jumped on with the federal government and went up to New York, worked up there for about five years with the current agency I'm with which is the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At that time I was working with specifically wildlife services. They focus more so on wildlife damage management conflicts so you know as our populations and epicenters grow and kind of expand out into the natural world there tend to be kind of conflicts on the edges of those areas with people and with wildlife and so that's what that agency focused on resolving. And then about two years ago I accepted my current position which is as you mentioned wildlife biologists with the Forest Service also with the Department of Agriculture and specifically I work here in Covington County on the Koneca National Forest. And I've been loving that position and looking forward to speaking with you a little bit more today about what all goes into that position as a biologist on the National Forest. Yes sir so what is like your day-to-day life as a biologist like what does your day look like? So in my current position I have a supervisory responsibilities and so what does that mean? It just means that I have a couple of employees that I supervise and I also oversee basically the wildlife program for the National Forest. So you know when it comes to the National Forest we have a wildlife shop, we have a timber shop, our fire shop as well as recreation and so I actually oversee the wildlife shop for the National Forest and so that means a typical day for me can be spent either working in the woods with the various different wildlife species we have here on the Koneca whether that be the red-cockaded woodpecker, the indigo snake, gopher tortoise, deer, turkey quail. It may mean conducting a prescribed fire in fact we're looking at planning one for tomorrow so that's probably what I'll be doing tomorrow. Collecting different types of data in the field that we then use back in the office to make decisions or my day may be spent totally in the office meeting with partners or doing fun things like this, interviews with folks, planning our work for the year or writing management plans and or even you know the not-so-exciting things like developing our budgets for the upcoming years you know but it's all necessary work that's what helps us really accomplish the work on the ground that everybody you know gets to see all the recreation users and different forest users that come out to the Koneca. That's cool I know we like to go hiking all the time in the Koneca National Forest so what is your favorite thing about your job? Oh there's a lot of different things to like about this job but I when it comes to my favorite thing I think what I chose was all the dedicated partners and co-workers I get to work with and meet throughout the year to accomplish our our different goals whether that be wildlife or habitat management or even you know our environmental education goals. Those are the folks that make my job a lot of fun, help me succeed in my position and one of the other things I really like about this position is it just there's a lot of days where it offers new challenges new experiences and that constantly keeps me on my toes and those new challenges that I face you know help me day to day grow as a professional biologist to become a better biologist. Very interesting so if there's any advice you give to the youth who want to go into a field similar to like biology what would you say? One of the biggest things I would offer as advice is just continue gaining experiences in the outdoors whether that be through opportunities like 4-H recreational activities on your own time you mentioned hiking on the national forest that's a great way to get out and experience a lot of different things or even outdoors competitions such as in Virathon that was something I participated in when I was in high school that I think really kind of pushed me down this path of becoming a wildlife biologist and honestly that's whether it's a career in the outdoors or any other type of career that's the advice I would offer hands-on experience is often the best teacher and will help you really determine whether or not that's ultimately the field that you want to pursue a career in so whatever experience you can gain will kind of help you make ultimately make that decision down the line. Very interesting um speaking about like the experiences and stuff I was in the wildlife habitat education program for 4-H for two or three years and um we had to identify like different animals and species of Alabama and so I was wondering how many positively IDed animals or species or whatever have you seen in in your time as a biologist? Oh man if we're talking total species that's going to be a pretty big number um you know I've spent time working in Georgia and then as I mentioned up in New York and then came down to Alabama um when it comes specifically to something like you know birds look to go with birds because there's uh you know they're when it comes to encountering things out in the woods or out in the field you know birds are probably the most frequently encountered species that you run into. I'd say reliably by sight I would uh I could probably identify a couple hundred birds maybe 200 or more um by sound I'd say the numbers less you know by call is a little more challenging takes a little more time to learn and I know plenty of people who are absolutely fantastic at identifying birds by all different types of sounds but I'm still learning when it comes to that area so I'd say maybe a hundred or more at this time but as I mentioned something I'm still working on because I do actually have to conduct um every spring breeding bird call surveys on the forest and so that's actually one of my responsibilities now so whenever I can find the free time I listen to bird calls and try to learn what I can. That's very interesting the only bird I can ID from sound is the bob line. Oh yeah very uh very distinct though that's a good one to know we uh we not only have those on the forest but we even have those in town I've heard them here um just stepping out of the house in the morning. Sometimes early in the morning I'll hear them outside my window they wake me up. So um how many ecosystems have you worked in? I know Georgia, New York, Alabama. Yeah so ecosystems is another fun one because it's uh you can define an ecosystem in a couple different ways and it really depends on kind of the scale that you're uh you're looking at so for instance you know you can look at the Connecticut National Forest as the Longleaf Pine ecosystem but within that ecosystem they're also kind of smaller scale ecosystems such as our picture plant bogs so really at a fine scale you know we can often interact with multiple ecosystems daily um you know you mentioned hiking on the forest earlier just on that hike you know you're you're kind of passing through multiple different types of ecosystems at a really fine scale. But to try to come up with an answer for your question uh I thought maybe we could look at a little bit larger scale such as ecoregions and so when it comes to ecoregions I can kind of provide a pretty good estimate so in Alabama we actually have six ecoregions and all of my time so far has been spent working in the southeastern plains ecoregion which actually makes up about half of the state most of the southern half of the state. In Georgia where I acquired my degrees there are there were also six ecoregions and I spent time working in four of those six so once again the southeastern plains just like here in Alabama but then also in the southern coastal plain the Piedmont and the Blue Ridge ecoregion and then in the five years I spent working in New York I uh I worked in four ecoregions up there the northeastern highlands eastern Great Lakes and Hudson lowlands northeastern coastal zone and Atlantic coastal pine barren so as I count it so far I've worked in eight unique ecoregions so far during my career. Wow very interesting I heard you talk about the pitcher plants and my dad he um he's a game warden with Alabama and so he okay he knows where the pitcher plants are and so earlier this summer we went and looked at that that's very interesting. Yeah there are a couple of um we've got a couple really unique pitcher plant bogs on the Caneca some that are really well known some that are actually fairly new um and I think we've probably got quite a few more to to kind of recover yet on the forest it's a it's a unique habitat type that can actually be suppressed for quite a while if the overstory becomes populated you know densely populated with trees and things like that but if we go in there and we cut those trees out and kind of release the moisture that they were capturing back to the soil you can actually see a lot of those plants come back up so I know just in the past year or two uh we've actually recovered a bog that we didn't know anything about until we went in there and and conducted some timber removal and turns out all these uh pitcher plants started popping up after that so that was really neat. That is neat so I have a really random question um have you ever been sent away to fight a forest fire or anything like that? I have not in my career not yet um the position I was in prior to this was not involved in battling wildfires so really it's just been my current position that I'm in so the past two years I've you know been in a position where I can conduct prescribed fires and of those two years I've only actually been qualified to be able to respond to a wildfire for the past year so the qualifications to prescribe burn are a little less arduous than the qualifications to battle a wildfire and so that's something I was actually able to finally attain last year and just haven't had that opportunity yet but I'm sure before too long I'll get that experience and I'm just looking for when the time comes looking forward to being able to help out however I can. Well that's all the questions I have for you today um is there anything you'd like to tell the in like ending words or whatever? Yeah yeah absolutely um as I mentioned before you know it's whether whether you're pursuing a career in the outdoors or you know maybe it's in the medical field or whatever it may be um just do whatever you can to to get as much experience as you can and learn as much about it as you can. Education is a powerful tool and as long as you're gaining hands-on experience that's really going to help you as I mentioned earlier kind of make those decisions down the line as to what really interests you and is going to keep you engaged and excited to get up every single day and go to work so you know when it comes to more specifics about you know okay now I've actually obtained my degree in a wildlife field and I want to know how do I specifically get a job maybe with a state agency or a federal agency uh there's a lot of tips and tricks involved there and when you get to that point in your career I would definitely encourage you to reach out to professionals like myself and ask those kinds of questions because like I said we've we've been through that process so we we can help you um kind of learn the ins and outs of how to how to be as competitive as possible for these positions um so when that time comes feel free to reach out to any one of us including myself I'm always happy and uh willing to speak with people who are interested in this field and answer any questions you may have. That's that's some good advice thank you Mr. Derek thank you for taking time out of your day to come and interview with us. Yeah thank you Abigail for having me it was a lot of fun I appreciate it.