(light upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to Prairie Pulse.

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll learn about the historic Alba Bales House on the campus of North Dakota State University.

But first, joining me now, is Marshall Johnson the Chief Conservation Officer with the National Audubon Society.

Marshall, thanks for joining us today.

- Thanks for having me, John.

It's great to be here.

- As we get started, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I'm originally from Texas and California, if you can't tell, and always wanted to move somewhere with prairies and a little bit colder for sure.

Spent a lot of my time growing up in Texas, California, sort of a debate, a raging debate between my parents, my mother is from Orange, Texas.

My dad flew out to California, 1958 with the Air Force SR71 unit and loved California and never wanted to move.

So we moved back and forth.

But I always knew that I wanted to be somewhere that was colder and not really a big city.

I always knew that from a young age and I decided upon the University of Minnesota Crookston to play football and study business management.

And so I thing I picked well in terms of both of those criteria.

I've spent four years there studying business management and towards the latter part of my time at University of Minnesota, I really got into nature and birds, particularly after going out, Dr. Dan Svedarsky, he's a well renowned Prairie-Chicken Ecologist and professor at the University.

I got out to a Prairie-chicken blind and I sort of it reminded me and tapped into something that was maybe laden in me from that time in West Texas and the Texas Flat Prairie.

So that's sort of how I got here, that's for sure.

- Well now you've been with the Audubon Society for a while.

So talk about that.

And then when were you recently, I guess, promoted or given the position of Chief Conservation Officer?

- Yeah, it was a six month experiment.

It was the worst six month experiment that you could imagine.

I thought that I would start with Audubon and do this bird thing for maybe six months and get that outta my system.

And I go to law school.

That was the plan.

And that was about 13 years ago now, I started as a part-time field organizer working with the local chapters and members around clean energy reform and really something about the birds, something about birds as a Canary in the coal mine, if you will, that really tell a complete story about environmental health and it didn't matter if people were conservative or liberal, people love birds.

Everyone has a bird story.

And I thought there's something here for me.

And so 13 years later, about a year ago, I was tapped by our new CEO, Dr. Elizabeth Gray to be the chief conservation officer of the organization.

- So, you know what's your role in the position?

So what do you really do?

- Well, the Audubon Society and its partner affiliate CHAP Local Chapters raise and invest nearly $300 million annually in work from the Boreal forest of Canada to the Colca Valley of Columbia, and everywhere you can imagine in between all in the pursuit of bird conservation.

We like to say that we protect the places birds need today and tomorrow.

And that really, the Chief Conservation Officer and my team, we're responsible for finding the strategies, identifying the partners and the projects that most efficiently and effectively meet that mission.

So it's a big job and I get to work with really fabulous, talented, passionate people and all in the name of birds, all in the name of bird conservation.

So that's my role and what we do at the Audubon Society.

- Yeah, and so how has it been going so far for that first year?

- Oh, it's amazing.

You know, I have a deep passion for the prairies and there's no place to work on prairie and grassland conservation best than right here in North Dakota.

So really enjoy that work.

The prairies will always have a special place in my heart, and in my focus, but now I get to work on boreal forest issues and Great Salt Lake and how the Great Salt Lake can be restored both for the benefit of people and the growing population in the Salt Lake City area, but also that millions of shorebirds migrate and use Great Salt Lake.

And so its restoration is so important for people and birds, we often say, we use the hashtag #birdstellus and it's really a catchall for when birds aren't doing so well, we're probably not gonna do so well.

And so in the current role, I get to work, on my team I have folks that have led some of the most groundbreaking bird and ornithological research, our chief scientist, Dr. Chad Wilsey.

I have a former chief of staff from members of Congress on my team.

I have folks that have been writing the thick of writing the farm bill and protecting the Everglades.

And so all of the excitement of my work today is I get to follow birds wherever they may roam throughout the Western Hemisphere, taking the Audubon mission trying to be a good partner and make a difference for birds at a real pivotal time for all birds species.

- Yeah, you talk about pivotal time.

Can you talk a little bit about sort of I'll call it unprecedented climate change that we're having and the biodiversity crisis, I guess, facing birds today.

- It's particularly challenging and complex for an organization like Audubon.

We can't just say we're gonna take care of nature and everything else will work out, or we're gonna address climate change and everything else will work out because the biodiversity crisis which has been unfolding for decades now, not particularly for birds since 1970, which sort of in the environmental world we sort of think of as the high watermark for environmental conservation Earth Day and all of the groundbreaking pieces of legislation that were passed.

It was sort of the high watermark in some respects for birds because we've lost three billion since 1970.

And so, we're at a point now where we have to arrest the decline of birds through public policy, through advocacy, through on the ground conservation while also meeting the needs and securing a clean climate future.

And so some of the times those things are in competition.

They can be in competition, but we find this place sort of in the middle where we are unapologetically advocating for clean energy and the solutions that can secure our climate future but also doing the things that secure the future for birds and biodiversity.

And there's a lot of overlap.

There's some things that don't quite overlap but those two things are going in so many ways are gonna be decided in this decisive decade that we've entered into.

And we've only got so much time on both of those fronts or we will enter into a period of extinction and loss in terms of birds.

- Yeah, so you talked a little bit about it, but really what are the answers in addressing the issues and what are your goals?

You know, maybe it's obvious, but can you define your goals?

- Yeah, when it comes to our mission, I would break it down into really two things, the joy of birds and action, that's really sums up how we go about protecting the future for birds.

It really depends on the suite of birds.

You know, number one, we have to get the climate crisis right.

We have to address the climate crisis or all other bets are off, but when it comes to the biodiversity crisis it really means forging unprecedented partnerships with maybe partners that we haven't always worked with.

I think about it in the context of our work here in the Northern Great Plains where we've literally worked with hundreds, even thousands of private landowners and ranchers to secure better habitat for birds and the future of rural communities.

We have to keep ranchers ranching, we have to keep folks out on the landscape, so they're providing that habitat for birds and sustaining their family legacies.

Those are partnerships that maybe we wouldn't have sought out 30 or 40 years ago but the crisis commands and demands that we seek out those partnerships with indigenous communities.

They have a long, long history of knowing how to care for the land and for humans.

So traditional ecological knowledge, tapping into partnerships with private land owners and passing and securing existing bedrock bird conservation laws like the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, like the Neotropical Bird Conservation Act, like the North American Wetlands Conservation Act.

These are bedrock laws that help us secure the future of birds which have come under attack recently.

- Yeah, yeah.

In April we celebrated Earth Day.

Why was Earth Day so important and how do you relate with that?

- You know, I particularly like this Earth Day because sort of the tag was Earth Day Every Day.

And I'm a big believer in that, we can't just relegate what is all special about earth and nature and wildlife to one day or one week or one month even because our challenges are so myriad and so numerous at this point that we have to really think about how every day we can embed bird conservation and what's good for nature into what we eat, the clothes we wear, you name it.

I think that's where we have to go, as opposed, I think, generally speaking, conservation, particularly land conservation, has set a little bit outside of the mainstream.

What we have to do, in the coming decade is really mainstream bird conservation, mainstream conservation.

Then I think there's some steps that are happening down that road, but it can't just be Earth Day.

I've sort of been a crank at cocktail parties around the notion of Earth Day for a while.

And I think now it's sort of catching on.

- Okay, well, can you describe the bird population in our region right now?

- You know, our region is dominated by historically dominated by prairies.

Eastern tall grass prairie in the Eastern part of the state, prairie grass species that would tower above both you and me, tower above Shaquille O'Neal even, to the mixed grass prairie and the rolling heels, the (indistinct) in the middle part of the state and then out the short grass prairie of the west there's lot less precipitation, lot less vegetation growth.

And the birds in each sort of corridor are drastically declining.

I remember when this, I didn't come up as a birder as a nature lover, and I remember starting and organizing birdwalks, and a man, a wonderful gentleman by the name of Dave Lambeth, he's sort of the pinnacle of birding in the Grand Forks in Northeast North Dakota.

He's a delightful man that has been facilitating and bringing people to the joy of birds for decades.

I remember an off comment he made to me probably almost 11 or 12 years ago that, "You know, Marshall, I take these breeding bird survey roots and I hear hundreds of meadowlarks.

And I've been doing this for 30 or 40 years."

I took the route this year and I didn't hear one meadowlark calling and it was stunning.

And it was something that I didn't fully appreciate the magnitude of the anecdote that was shared.

But now we know that three billion birds have been lost and no suite of birds have seen greater loss than those right here in our backyard here in North Dakota.

And that's grassland birds.

So to your question, our birds aren't doing so great, birds that once filled the air and filled our life with song are now calling out to us with their silence.

And it's really a call to arms to do something about it.

- Wow, interesting.

In your job biography, it says you will lead hemispheric wide conservation work.

What does that mean?

What is that?

- Yeah, most people don't know.

I think folks here in North Dakota, we appreciate this a little bit more than most.

Most birds spend the majority of their life, not just half their life, but the majority of their life somewhere else, in Columbia, Peru, Ecuador, or somewhere else, not here, they're migratory birds.

Some of them neotropical migratory birds meaning they spend most of their life down south closer to the Equator.

Half their life or really more than half their life.

And so what that means is that we have to get really smart and expansive about how we think about bird conservation.

Just doing all we can in our backyard here for say bobolinks really doesn't help that species if there's something happening in their wintering range, in their wintering habitat south of the border that is impacting that species.

And so Audubon is taking a hemispheric wide approach to conservation in a way that is unprecedented, that we hope meets the challenge that are facing migratory birds, of the three billion birds that were lost, 2.5 billion of them were migratory birds.

So it really demands of Audubon and our partners that we use technology like never before, that we work together in an unprecedented fashion and that we bring people along.

There are 47 million birders in the United States.

- Hmm.

Yeah.

- And that's an incredibly powerful constituent that have a built-in love for birds and it's needed now more than ever, and again, across the whole hemisphere.

- Yeah, so how important are designated reserves and for animals and their habitats?

I know you do things with farmers and other landowners.

- It depends on the landscape.

Well, I would say across the board, preserves reserves are great refuges for birds.

They always have been, you can think of the National Wildlife Refuge System in some way as the best of the best, the backbone of Migratory Bird Conservation, but they're just a little spec in the broader landscape that's needed to support vibrant strong bird populations.

And so bird reserves are great.

But what we're going to need to do is partner with private landowners in a voluntary fashion in an unprecedented way moving forward to really secure the future for migratory birds, that could be rice farmers in the Central Valley, that could be ranchers here in the Northern Great Plains, and so many different landowners, that could be folks living along the river here, which is a important corridor, for nearly 30 species of warblers every spring.

Private landowners and local governments have an incredible role to play in bird conservation, moving forward outside of refuges.

- Yeah, with that said, how do you balance environmental concerns with progress, with hunting, and maybe other issues?

- Yeah, it's one of the things that I think have been at the forefront of what we've done here in the Dakotas.

And I'll give you an example.

When we started, I was a one person, I was vice president executive director of one, me, I didn't have any staff.

And so it really, it was sort of the drawing board and empty canvas for how we were gonna build the program.

And there were really sort of a key things that we focused on.

And one of the things was really thinking about the local interest.

What are the local concerns?

No one likes sort of folks parachuting in and telling them what to do.

So balancing, sometimes we find a perfect fit, cattle and grassland birds can be managed in a way that it really mimics the historic patterns of bison and elk and other prairie species from days gone past, right?

That's a win-win.

Sometimes there's a little bit more conflict.

The sighting of wind energy, how we need wind energy, landowners love wind energy.

Wind energy, any energy, any activity that humans do, more or less have an impact on birds.

So it's really about finding that local overlap where it can work and finding those win-win situations.

- Yeah, Marshall, we only have about a minute left.

How many employees do you work with now?

- I work with nearly 1,000 employees across the whole Western hemisphere.

- Yeah, and how are you funded?

- Through private donations.

We are a 501c3, private donations, public grants where applicable.

Private foundations individuals, I think philanthropy is an amazing thing.

I love working in philanthropy and to do so on behalf of birds, it doesn't get much better.

- Well, and so what is the best part of your job?

- The people, the people, the communities, visiting a project, maybe years after you've worked on it and hearing birds calling that weren't calling when you got there.

- All right.

Well, if people want more information, where can they go?

Who can they contact?

- Audubon.org.

- Well, it's just that simple.

All right.

Well, Marshall, I wish we had more time.

We'll have to have you back on.

Thanks for joining us today.

- Absolutely, thank you, John.

- Stay tuned for more.

(light music) The Alba Bales House at North Dakota State University in Fargo once served as a training site for home economic students.

During their senior year, women lived at the house for six weeks at a time, learning to cook, clean, and set beautiful tables.

While such training today seems antiquated, the women look back finally at their time in the historic house.

(soft music) - It was like the real life experience of some of the classes that we had taken, especially in management, planning, organizational skills, nutrition because we cooked all our meals.

So a lot of it was to make sure that we scheduled things well, that we were organized, that we learned how to manage, work together as a team, lots of times.

So it was sort of that real life experience of the classes we had taken up to that point.

- Five to eight students lived here at a time during one academic quarter in their senior year.

And so it was during this time that they were able to put into practice the theory and principles that they were learning in the classroom.

But those weeks were really regimented.

In addition to their regular classes each student was required to assume a role in the running of the household.

They were responsible for the cooking, for the cleaning, budgeting, grocery shopping, laundry, hosting dinners, and entertaining guests.

They also provided demonstrations to Fargo homemakers and other students.

So for many of them, this could be a really stressful experience.

This was the first time they had done a lot of this but it also provided amazing opportunities for them to develop their skills in public speaking, preparing research.

And for many of them, it was their first exposure to other cultures and to wider social issues.

For colleges to access federal funds, they had to provide an opportunity for students to have practical experience in a demonstration setting.

And in 1917, MBSU did not have that available on the campus.

Alba Bales came to NDSU in 1920 as head of the School of Home Economics.

She immediately began advocating to build a home demonstration house.

She was very persuasive with the legislature.

It was through her efforts that the funds were appropriated for this house.

Ground was broken in October of 1922.

And the first class of students lived here in the fall quarter of 1923.

Alba Bales oversaw the construction of the house.

She saw that it was fitted out with the most modern and up to date equipment to meet the needs of the home economics curriculum.

During her tenure here as Dean, Alba Bales championed home economics research, and she incorporated classes into the curriculum that focused on improving the health of children and running an efficient household.

She retired in 1942 and in 1954, the house was rededicated from the home demonstration house to the Alba Bales House to honor her leadership in getting this house built and the opportunities that this house provided to the students.

There was a faculty member who lived in the house with the girls who enforced the rules.

And also all of the activities that the women did in this house as students, they were graded on.

- Eleanor Vergin was her name, and she lived in the apartment up in the third floor and she was known as very strict but she liked our group really well, 'cause we seemed to get along very well with her.

And we had quite a time.

The most pressure was when we were the cook or the manager when we had to manage everybody else.

And when we had to cook the meals and we had to plan the meals and we had to have a budget that we had to work with and we planned three meals a day.

That was the most pressure.

- Once you got in the house, oh, nerves kind of started to come out because there were all these expectations.

And then you were concerned about doing the right thing, and of course getting a good grade.

Many of us came from farm families and things were a little bit loose-knit maybe because life was very busy working with outside and inside and gardening.

And this was a little different situation.

We had classwork too, that we had to get our homework done, and our reports done as well as the house management.

- It was intense.

I can remember exactly scrubbing the bricks on the fireplace and the tile down below.

And if you would not use a clean wash cloth in the right way, and you ended up with say a gray from the fireplace, all of a sudden there was a little bit of gray on that clean wash cloth.

You had to start all over with a toothbrush.

Not only was it that the walls had to be perfectly clean and the windows, oh my goodness, there couldn't be a streak.

If there was a streak, then you had to go back, start all over.

- I do remember coming over here and having to compare like vacuum cleaners.

We had to literally measure out X number of ounces of sand and grit it into a rug with our feet and then vacuum up that and then take out the bag and measure how much of that had come in in the vacuum cleaners.

- So now I'm very careful about how I set the table.

I have company and I do, it's not just you throw a potluck on, I do a really formal job of that.

It has stood me in good stead.

- Well, that's all we have on Prairie Pulse this week and as always, thanks for watching.

(light upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funded by NDSU Libraries, NDSU College of Human Sciences and Education, and by the members of Prairie Public.