Beakuency welcomes Gillian Duer, the seasonal outreach coordinator of Rheinstrom Hill Audubon Sanctuary and Center in Columbia County.
With her background in environmental education and science communication, Duer has played an active role in raising awareness of the exciting development of forest restoration at the sanctuary that has led to significantly more bird sightings. Her programs provide toolsets for the local community to understand the natural world more deeply. In this interview, she shares the challenges and rewards of community outreach, her career path in environmental work, and her passion for outdoor education that nurtures respect and caring for others which she believes ultimately leads to protecting the environment.
This interview broadcasted on September 28th, 2024 at Wave Farm's WGXC 90.7FM in upper Hudson valley.
Interview Transcript
Gillian Duer: My name is Gillian Duer, and I am the current seasonal outreach coordinator here at Rheinstrom Hill Audubon Sanctuary and Center.
Mayuko Fujino: Could you tell us what kind of programs you've organized?
GD: One of the main programs that I've done a handful of times at both in a library setting as well as at two of the local summer day camps was basically talking about bird adaptations with kids to get them informed about birds, and how interesting and cool they are. A couple of the other programs that I've done have been about nature journaling, that's one I just did today. Another one that I also just did today was a joint program with the New York Forest Owners Association. We did a walk of one of the trails to take a look at the forest management that we've been doing here over the past, I think it's been ten years, to try to help restore the forest quality.
I did another program with the Alan Devoe Bird Club, and that was to introduce people to birding and get people interested in it. I did a Coffee Hour program to talk with people about how birds are being impacted by climate change. For that one, I brought in the Hudson Valley land steward for Audubon. And between the two of us, we talked about looking at statistics and what Audubon has reported, as well as just talking about, like, what we've seen, how birds are being impacted by climate change.
MF: Some of the programs had a pretty good turn out, I mean, the ones I participated in.
GD: Programming here has been really mixed. In addition to doing programs at libraries as well as programming with other organizations, I was also planning and organizing what I guess would be considered like one off programs here on site. That one, it would just be me. There was no other organization involved in those ones. I never had anyone show up. I had one person show up for one program. I think I organized close to ten programs that were here on site, and they just didn't take with the public. But all the programming that I've been doing at the libraries and with other organizations have been really successful and have had people show up to it, which has been really nice and encouraging. And it has been helpful for the Audubon Society, the Hudson Valley Audubon area, to know what kind of programming works for this site.
MF: When there's a partner you would have more reach, I guess, because they already have some community of their own.
GD: Yeah. Working with the partners who already had a base of their own was really helpful because they did their own advertising to their people. And since I'm the first person to be doing this kind of outreach for Rheinstrom Hill, there really isn't much of a base. I tried advertising for our events on social media, which the only social media that Rhinestrom has is Facebook. Facebook isn't as big as it used to be.
MF: Right.
GD: And in addition to that, not a whole lot of people are paying attention to what Rheinstrom is posting. And I posted a lot. I basically breathed life back into that social media page. But in terms of getting comments or liking or sharing, it just didn't take.
MF: That's a struggle for many organizations, especially because not necessarily what we do on our end, but the social media itself, like you said, Facebook isn't that much of a thing anymore.
But I think it was quite successful, the ones I participated in.
GD: Yeah.
MF: Joint effort is always a plus.
GD: Joint effort, it takes a village, definitely.
MF: These programs are really across all different age groups. Some of the programs you have kids, and others, like the forest management thing, obviously those are for adults, a certain type of adults, even. They have a special interest in certain things. So you work with all these different groups. How did you get the skills to navigate communicating with all these completely different types of people?
GD: Majority of my background is working with kids. Working as an instructor, doing outdoor environmental education is what I've been doing for the past. What is it, like, three years now, since I graduated from undergrad. I graduated from my undergrad in 2021. So I spent my senior year dealing with COVID and everything that had to go with that. And so after I graduated, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew I definitely didn't want to go back to school immediately. I was done with academics. I had had a somewhat horrible final year just because of COVID and all that.
But I found my way into the amazing world of outdoor environmental education through an AmeriCorps position I had at a state park close to where I was living. And for that, I was an interpreter. Not like a language interpreter, but an interpretive guide, as it was described to me. I was interpreting the land and the natural world to people who came to my programs. While there were programs that were geared towards children, there were also programs where anyone of any age could come. So I got a lot of experience working with adults. But like I said, most of my experience has been with kids. So trying to help focus my programs towards also including adults was not exactly a learning curve, but I had to think a little bit more about what I wanted to present, how I wanted it to be presented.
MF: But if you can explain things the way kids can understand, that also covers lots of adults.
GD: Yeah, for sure. Because if you really have to tone things down a bit to get kids to understand, you can easily talk about it to adults.
MF: I'm not from the United States, and English is not my native language. I've gotten better, but it's been a long time for me to come to understand what people are saying. So I would imagine if you can explain things in a simple language, that opens up a door for lots of people who are not a fluent English speaker also.
GD: Absolutely. And one of the big things that I was taught about – I eventually did go back to school and I got my masters in environmental education and science communication – one of the things that we were taught is teaching people where they're at. And the idea of multiple forms of knowledge, multiple ways of knowing. People have different backgrounds, they're going to know different things, and they're going to experience certain parts of the world differently based on their backgrounds. So (it’s about) finding ways to try to highlight those backgrounds and show people that, like, just because you have a different background and you have experienced things differently, it doesn't invalidate your knowledge. You can contribute towards how other people are learning. I try to keep that in the back of my mind and make sure everyone is feeling involved and that their thoughts and opinions aren't invalidated, because everyone has different life experiences.
MF: At the library event “the Coffee Hour” that you organized, which was a presentation of how the forest management programs here at Rheinstrom Hill had been going, you and Dave Decker (Land Steward at New York Audubon) had a lot of interesting information there. And I wanted you to talk specifically about birds in this interview. So there's been a forest restoration process going on here to improve conditions for birds and other at-risk wildlife. And you mentioned some specific species of birds that's been increasing. I wanted you to talk about that.
GD: Part of the management that we've been doing here has been to try to bring back a younger forest and try to diversify the age of the forest that we have here, because due to the history of the property and how it came to be as it is now, a lot of the trees here are the same age, and that's a bit of an issue. It's a middle aged forest, that’s what it's called, and not a whole lot of birds like a middle aged forest. They either like a mature forest or a young forest.
MF: So this is because Rheinstrom, the person, planted the trees. That's why the age groups are pretty much the same. And this is like 60 years ago or something…?
GD: Yeah, it was about like 60, 70 something years ago, a lot of the property used to be farmland when Rheinstrom and his wife bought the place. So they planted a lot of white pine here. It was something that was provided to them by the state, and Rheinstrom would plant it along with the assistants. This is hearsay, but supposedly he recruited the local kids in town to help him plant all the white pines. So a lot of it was planted with good intentions, but there wasn't a strategy to it.
MF: I see. So not just the age group, but also species-wise, it's not diverse. And that's what you're trying to change.
GD: Yeah. So a select handful of the trees were cut down in order to open up the canopy. All the invasive species that were there were removed, and a deer enclosure fence was put up, because in addition to the condition of the forest, the presence of a high population of deer was also having an impact. And as part of the management and the plan in place, there were surveys done before management and afterwards to try to record and get specific data to show if what we were doing was actually working. And in certain areas – there are three plots, three deer enclosure fenced areas – at one of the sites, which was the pilot site, it was the first one put up. It's the one that had the fence pulled down first. What they found was that around 27 species of birds that hadn't been recorded being present at that specific site were now present.
MF: Twenty-seven. That's a lot.
GD: Yeah. And at one of the other sites, the second one that was put up, I think they've recorded nine species. I don't know all of them off the top of my head, but I do know the really important ones that they wanted to highlight were the Chestnut-sided warblers, Yellow-billed cuckoos, Wood thrush and (American) woodcocks. And Eastern towhees. There were no Eastern towhees here before we did management.
MF: Now there are tons of them.
GD: Now there are so many of them. But before we did any management, they weren't here. And Eric Lind, who is the center director in charge of education in the centers here in New York for their Hudson Valley area, had this little anecdote – I think within the first couple years that they had put up the fence, they spotted two Eastern towhees, a male and a female, that were following each other around. And that was the first time that they were showing interest in being here and wanting to nest here. And because the bird surveys are done twice a year, and one is in June, it's done after most of the birds have migrated. So we're recording the birds that are actually staying here and breeding and nesting, not the ones that are just stopping by to go further north.
And so … 27 species.
MF: That's a huge improvement.
GD: It is.
MF: How did you come to work with Audubon New York?
GD: The job I work during most of the year, it's during the school year. So my summers and winters, I have to figure out where to work, where to be. Home for me is in Virginia, and that's a drive away. So for this summer, back in April, May, I was trying to find a job to apply to for the summer, and I was hoping to try to stay up here in the New England area. So that way I didn't have to drive all the way back home, just to drive all the way back up.
So I used the conservation job board, and the NAAEE which stands for the North America Association of Environmental Education. Both of them are really good job boards for any kind of environmental job, whether it's working as a technician or an internship or an instructor, they'll post about anything. And so before I applied here, I'd actually applied for a job at another Audubon center down in Greenwich, Connecticut. I couldn't take up the job in Connecticut because they didn't provide housing. And I don't know if anyone knows the Greenwich area, but housing out there is expensive, and so I just couldn't take the job even if I wanted to.
So I looked around Audubon's website to try to see, like, is there anything else within Audubon that I could apply to? And that's where I found this position. And I was reading through the description, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is everything that I'm looking for. Like, I'm trying to get to work towards being more than just an instructor, as much as I absolutely love it too. I like helping to coordinate, creating curriculum, that was something I really enjoyed when I was in grad school. So finding a job where I was in charge of creating the programming and having that level of control, I was like, this is perfect. It's a nice little step up towards where I'm hoping to eventually be.
The interview I had with Rebecca Schultz, who's the center director, was amazing. It didn't even feel much like an interview. It was more just like a conversation. And she kind of offered me the job right on that phone call. It was such a great phone call, and I think we clicked right away. I think that's what really helped with getting the job, that it felt like a conversation. The skills I had to offer obviously help, but... yeah. And it's been so wonderful working with Rebecca.
MF: There are a lot of people who look for a job like what you do, and I was wondering what the key was to get here. But probably it's not so much only about the ability. I mean, a lot of people can be competent, but if your wavelengths are not similar with the people you're going to work with, then…
GD: Yeah, being on the same wavelength as the people that you're going to be working with definitely helps.
MF: And people who are on the employer's side, too, I guess that's what they probably are looking for. People who feel like… like a teammate, basically.
GD: Definitely, yeah. You have to be on a team.
MF: I was told that you're leaving, though. So you've had a good experience working with Audubon, and you're going to be leaving by the end of this month… or October.
GD: Yep. October 4th is my official last day.
MF: And then where are you going?
GD: I'm heading up to New Hampshire. The company that I worked for during this school year, it's called Outdoor Classroom. It used to be called Nature's Classroom, but we had a name change, I think it was last month. The company does environmental education, it does residential, so schools will come to our sites and stay the night for a couple days. They get split up into field groups, and each instructor gets a field group. And they go off, explore the property and explore nature and learn not only about nature, but also team building, and all these other awesome things. The classes range from being nature based skills, like birding is a class that we have, we also do fishing. We have a couple classes that are a bit more on the anthropology side teaching kids about civilizations, like, learn about why people do what they do, what do people need to thrive? And that can correlate over to what do animals need to survive.
MF: So it's about understanding the environment and how that supports human lives.
GD: Yeah. Side component of doing classes like that is like they're forced to work together. You can't really take the time to care about the planet and take care of it unless you care about the people who are living on it. And so if you can't work with other people, if you can't care about the other people who are going to the same school as you, then why would they care about the place where they're living?
MF: I think it is important to learn to respect other people's lives because that's often the challenge in nature conservation, it seems. The people's need versus nature's need are sometimes in conflict, but there's always a reason for anybody to do anything. And without understanding that part, you can't address the conflict and resolve it.
GD: Agriculture is needed. People need it for food. People need it for jobs. And housing and all that… like, “we need to stop building all these houses and building all these roads. It's destroying all the land.” Yes, but people need places to live. We need to be able to get to places. So all these problems are twofold. Yes, you need to think about the environment, but there's also the people, us living here, that you also need to think about. You gotta find the balance between the two, making sure that the people are taken care of. And then once the people are taken care of, then you can look at the land.
MF: So hopefully your program starts the kids from their early age to have that perspective on the world.
GD: Hopefully, yeah.
MF: Great. So that's going to be your next job.
GD: Yeah, going back to that, which I'm excited about. As much as I love creating curriculum, I really do like being out there and teaching. I like being, you know, boots on the ground and working with the kids. Another saying I got from grad school, “we didn't inherit the land from our ancestors. We're borrowing the land from our children.” We need to think about the kids, but also need to get them involved in caring about the future of this planet and the land that they're living on.
MF: Well, thank you so much for this conversation and time. good luck with the next job. We're glad to have had you up in the Hudson valley.
GD: Thank you. It's beautiful out here. Just the mountains… and even being down at Constitution Marsh (Audubon Center and Sanctuary) in that lower Hudson area, it's so beautiful down there. One of my favorite little tidbits is that that portion of the Hudson river is technically a fjord.
MF: Oh.
GD: Yeah, because a fjord is like a section of, like a river where it's in a valley and the depth is actually deeper than the output. So that section of the Hudson river is deeper than when the Hudson goes out into, I think it's long island sound, or does it go out into the Atlantic? Whichever body of water it goes into, it's deeper, and that's what makes it a fjord.
MF: And this is what excites you about the Hudson Valley.
GD: And the mountains. It's so hilly. I grew up in Ohio, where it's flat in cornfields. So seeing hills and mountains is really exciting.
MF: Well, thank you for the joyful nerdiness.
GD: Absolutely.
Bird-inspired Music of the Month
An owl song by Southeast of Rain 东南有雨, a US-based experimental duo, and music from The Secret Lives Of Birds, a 2024 release by Patricia Wolf, an Oregon-based artist who “dives deep into her personal library of field recordings and birding experiences, writing songs that show the variety of emotions and wonders that birds bring.”
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