Paul Tritaik is the refuge manager at Pelican Island and Archie Carr national wildlife refuges in the Treasure Coast area. When EcoFlorida spoke to him in March, he had just wrapped up a week of events to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the national wildlife refuge system, with Pelican Island the focal point of everything due to its status as the first federal refuge. Not resting on his laurels after such a feat, he was able to recount all of the happenings of the entire centennial celebration in detail and look forward to more events in the future, all while touting the refuge system and displaying a special fondness for sea turtles.

EF: I’ve seen Pelican Island, but I’ve never been to Archie Carr. What is it like?

PT: It’s actually lands that have been acquired along 20 miles of beachfront between Melbourne Beach in Brevard County and Wabasso Beach in Indian River County, and parts that make up the refuge are scattered along 20 miles. The refuge lands currently don’t have any public facilities, but there are state/county parks that are within that 20-mile stretch that we work with to provide access and beach-related recreation.

We work with University of Central Florida and Sebastian Inlet State Park to survey all the beaches within the refuge, and we do that from March through September to get a nesting count for all the species that nest within the refuge. And we also do guided turtle walks in conjunction with Sebastian Inlet State Park and the Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC). And those reservations are taken by those 2 organizations -- Sebastian Inlet SP and CCC.

EF: I’ve heard of CCC. I have to ask how a Caribbean group got to Florida.

PT: Well, that was an organization that was actually begun by Dr. Archie Carr and others to protect sea turtle nesting beaches within the wider Caribbean area, and their main research station is located in Costa Rica, Tortugerro. They were very instrumental in protecting that beach for the largest nesting population of green turtles. They also work with other countries to protect sea turtles, and their United States base of operations is here in Florida, in Gainesville, which is the hometown of Archie Carr. He was a professor of zoology at the University of Florida. So that’s how they got the name, just to reflect that their interests were regional instead of national because sea turtles migrate all over the Caribbean -- in fact, all over the western hemisphere, for some species. I guess you could say the name reflects that.

EF: Could you tell me about the sea turtles in the refuges you oversee?

PT: We have 3 species of sea turtles that nest on Archie Carr. The most common is the loggerhead; they’re a threatened species. We have roughly 25% of all loggerhead nests in the country. On a good year, we’ll have as many as 20,000 nests. The other 2 species that nest at Archie Carr are the green turtle and the leatherback. The green turtle is also very well represented at Archie Carr. We probably have 30% to 35% of all green turtle nests at Archie Carr laid within the refuge. The leatherback, on a good year, we’ll have over 2,000 green turtle nests. The leatherbacks, we have relatively few, they’re also an endangered species. We’ll get more than 20 nests on a good year, so those rough numbers give you an indication of the relative preponderance of the species.

EF: That’s great. What about turtle walks?

PT: Turtle walks are permitted by the state of Florida, and we are only permitted to view loggerhead turtles. So when we do take groups out, those are the species that we will be targeting, just so that people don’t expect they’ll be able to go on a turtle walk for leatherbacks or greens. We do that because loggerheads are much more common, and the risk of disturbing the nesting population is much less because there are so many more loggerheads available. We take extra precaution not to disturb the leatherbacks and green turtles.

EF: As refuge manager, what is your work like?

PT: Well, unfortunately as a manager, I spend a lot of my time in the office, making sure that all the administrative responsibilities are taken care of and all the staff and volunteers are supervised to get the fun stuff done.

But I do get a chance to go out and participate in some of the activities that my staff do -- for example, wildlife surveys, both at Pelican Island and at Archie Carr. Archie Carr surveys entail going out on the beach on an ATV ’cause we have about 7 miles of beach to cover, and we do that 7 days a week for 7 months. We have someone out on the beach evaluating whether there is a sea turtle on the beach. It’s pretty obvious by looking at the crawl, and then determining whether or not they’ve nested, which isn’t so obvious. And, of course, identifying the species that left those tracks. I used to do a lot of that until I had a staff hired to help me do that, so I don’t get out on the beach as much as I used to. That’s one aspect.

Of course, outreach and education is another. I work with my refuge ranger to plan festivals and special events like we just had. This was going to be the mother of all special events, I think. I don’t know if we can top this one.

EF: You can do it again in another hundred years.

PT: Yeah, right. I’d have to be cryogenically preserved. Anyway, we do a lot of outreach, and the festival is our major outreach project. And now that we have public facilities, we have interpretive panels, and we’ll be utilizing roving volunteers to help educate the public about what they’re seeing out on the refuge.

Of course, there’s a lot of planning involved. We’re undergoing a major restoration project at the refuge. We’re trying to restore citrus groves back to mangrove habitat and maritime hammock, and working with the county and the state to accomplish that. That’s a major project. We’re also planning to stabilize Pelican Island. We’ve started the stabilization project, but we need to finish the project and ensure long-term protection for the island, and we’re working with some other state partners as well as federal partners to help accomplish that. That’s another major project. So planning is a big part of what I do.

I guess just about every aspect of the refuge, I get involved in, and make sure that we’re doing the best that we can to manage the wildlife and the habitat we’re responsible for and also to provide good education and interpretation for the public and an opportunity for the public to safely enjoy the refuge.

EF: Do you ever feel like you’re the very first refuge manager, Paul Kroegel, since you’re doing his job, only 100 years later? You even have the same first name.

PT: Well, I hope I do the name justice, and I follow in his footsteps and honor his legacy. Because I think that’s what all Fish and Wildlife Service employees attempt to do, and I have the unique opportunity to follow in his footsteps here are Pelican Island. What I hope to accomplish is protecting Pelican Island for the next hundred years, just as he was able to for the first hundred years. If, in 100 years, Pelican Island is still thriving and the birds are still returning to their nests, then I will feel I’ve done my part to continue that legacy, and hopefully, others that follow will continue that as well.

I look at young students at Pelican Island Elementary School that are members of the eco troop and I see what they’re doing, protecting scrub habitat around their school for scrub jays. They’re actually going out and buying land. They’re raising money for their school to save scrub jays. They’re not waiting to become adults to make a difference; they’re taking action now. So in that regard, our children are not just our future, they’re our present, and they can be effective as children. And to me, that’s really inspiring because I remember when I was their age, I was just thinking, well, I hope some day as an adult, I can make a difference. And to see them already making a difference is really encouraging. And they of course have helped Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge as well. They’ve come out and they’ve planted marsh grasses to help stabilize the shoreline at Pelican Island, [and] they’ve helped plant trees for us, so they’re already making a difference for their namesake, and I’m really encouraged by that because I know that the future is bright for the refuge system and for Pelican Island.

EF: I hadn’t heard about that. That’s exciting. What else would you say people can do to help wildlife refuges?

PT: Certainly, everybody can do their share individually at home by recycling more, by taking better care of their resources and not polluting the waterways -- for example, not overusing pesticides and herbicides, fertilizers that will run off into the waterways and pollute the waterways. There are things that we all can do as homeowners to make a difference.

But for people that want to make a difference at a national wildlife refuge, they can certainly sign up to volunteer to help their nearby refuge. And that could be helping disseminate information about the refuge, passing out literature or brochures, or leading tours, or helping out with removing exotic plants, or planting native plants, or helping out in a variety of different ways. All they need to do is contact their local refuge and ask to speak to their volunteer coordinator and tell the volunteer coordinator what their skills are, and they may have some skills that the refuge could use that they don’t currently have and see how they can help the refuge that way.

EF: Hopefully, with all the buzz about the centennial, people have gotten the message that Pelican Island was set aside to protect birds from plume hunters. And at the time of the centennial, some people spoke out against hunting in the refuges. What do you think of that?

PT: Refuges are primarily responsible for protecting populations of wildlife, and there are some refuges that have an overpopulation of certain types of wildlife or have such an abundant population of some species that a limited harvest is sustainable. For example, some refuges have a lot of white-tailed deer that, if they didn’t have a hunt program, the white-tailed deer would eventually eat out all of the available forage, and some of them would starve because of lack of top predators, particularly in eastern refuges. So you have a lot of refuges, more the upland refuges, with deer hunts, for example, and that helps control the deer herd. You have some refuges that allow waterfowl hunting because there’s an abundance of certain types of waterfowl, and that is permitted because it’s been shown that the populations of waterfowl can sustain a limited hunt. And it also gives that recreational opportunity to a lot of the people that have helped pay for waterfowl habitat. In other words, a lot of lands that are now national wildlife refuges [were] purchased through the sale of duck stamps, our federal hunting permits for waterfowl. Where those populations are abundant, those refuges do allow hunts because it’s part of their organic legislation, or it’s part of the reason they were established, in other words, to ensure that lands that were paid for on the backs of duck hunters, for example, would still be available for them to use so long as the species were not overhunted. And of course, we have bag limits and refuge hunt programs that have restrictions, both in areas and in times that hunts are conducted to manage that harvest. So from a purely biological standpoint, hunting is allowed where it is compatible, where it is sustainable, and it doesn’t affect the population of the species that is targeted.

The same thing with fishing. Fishing is permitted in most refuges, and most of the fish that are caught are fish that are fairly abundant. There are sports fish, and they are fairly abundant, and we certainly don’t allow fishing for fish that are endangered or that are very rare on refuges. Those refuges that are established for endangered species of fish, for example, probably are the refuges that don’t allow fishing. . . . For example, at Pelican Island, most of the refuge is under water, so there’s a lot of fish in the Indian River Lagoon, and anyone with a state fishing license can fish within the water portion of the refuge. We do restrict fishing in some of our lakes and ponds because we don’t have a lot of fish in those. But where the fish are abundant, we allow fishing, and most of the refuges do, as well.

If you look at most of our earliest conservationists, [President] Theodore Roosevelt being a prime example, he was a hunter, but he also saw the value in conserving species. And the term “conservation” is distinct from the term “preservation.” Conservation implies that the species that you’re managing and protecting is sustainable, and you’re not trying to protect each individual animal, but you’re trying to protect a population or a group of animals that need protection. And conservation implies that there is use of resources, but it’s a sustainable use. In this context, wildlife could be considered a resource because they reproduce -- and because they reproduce, they’re a renewable resource. So those species of wildlife that are abundant and can sustain a limited harvest are considered resources to be conserved. People like Theodore Roosevelt, even Paul Kroegel, he hunted ducks for food to feed his family, deer, turkey, they needed to to survive. Even a lot of the earliest naturalists hunted to study birds, for example. James Audubon, he hunted birds. The only way that he could see birds up close was to shoot them and to preserve their skins, and that’s how he was able to obtain all of those species of birds. Those were from study skins that he had shot. Frank Chapman, he was instrumental in protecting Pelican Island, he shot some pelicans for his exhibit up at the American Museum of Natural History because they needed to have some specimens to study, first of all, and also to put on display so that people would have a close-up experience that had never seen a pelican before, and of course, he only shot what he needed. But a lot of the early ornithologists were hunters, and so you could argue that these people who were very instrumental in the beginning of the conservation movement were hunters themselves, but they recognized the difference between a sustainable hunt and nonsustainable hunt. They were very opposed to plume hunting that had a commercial value, that the commercial value of the animal outweighed any concern for their conservation, ensuring that there would be enough of them to reproduce and survive into perpetuity. The plume hunters certainly didn’t care, and some of the market hunters that were shooting other birds for food or for whatever reason didn’t care, and that’s why it was important that laws were passed so that these species some of which should never be hunted because there’s not a very good justification for them to be hunted, but some can be on a sustainable basis, like waterfowl, like doves that people like to eat, quail, turkey, and mammals like deer, elk. These are animals that still are valuable to us as a society from a consumptive standpoint as well as a non-consumptive standpoint. So some people enjoy the thrill of the hunt even if they don’t ever fire off a shot. Other people who don’t like to hunt enjoy the thrill of just encountering animals in the wild. None of those experiences would be possible if it hadn’t have been for the early sportsmen that helped set aside land for their protection, so it’s important that we remember that.

EF: What would you like to see happen in Florida’s refuges?

PT: Well, I’d like to see us be able to protect more habitat for the species that need it the most, species like the Florida panther, manatees, sea turtles, other species that really need habitat protected and also lands that we already are managing.

What I’d really like to see is an increase in operations and maintenance funds that enable us to manage the lands that we are responsible for. Right now, most refuges are under-funded and under-staffed, and in order for us to really do our job, we need more resources. I would say that, more than anything, is what’s most important -- so that we can control exotic plants and animals that are competing with the species that we’re trying to protect and manage for, and also just to have enough resources to protect our wildlife.

Another species that I would put in that category of needing lands to protect would be sea turtles. Our beaches are undergoing a lot of change, and the more beaches we can protect, the better chances of sea turtles surviving in the future, so I would put that high on my list as well.