Veteran ranger and Blue Ridge Parkway biologist Tom Davis follows a grassy path east from the Franklin County parking lot of one of the park’s oldest designated recreation sites. He passes through a gap in the weathered, stacked-rail cedar fence into a 2,500-foot mountaintop meadow of chest-high wildflowers abuzz with bees, birds, butterflies, and moths. The trail soon descends into lush, spring-green forest that seems to age as you go: Undergrowth thins to a mix of ferns, shrubs, and moss that unfurls like a carpet beneath the sprawling limbs of gnarled, centuries-old white oaks.
“Old growth montane forests are few and far between, but this is one of them,” whispers Davis, 59, pausing about a mile in before a small, startlingly picturesque glade to survey the canopy with a pair of binoculars. Smart View Recreation Area is subsequently one of the Commonwealth’s most under-the-radar havens for native and migratory high-elevation songbirds. Davis has personally helped document the presence of about 120 species—including a hit parade of birder bucket listers like Kentucky warbler, golden-crowned kinglet, brown creeper, or winter wren—and confirm a thriving breeding population of one of the western hemisphere’s most endangered migratory songbirds, the cerulean warbler.
“When I first came onboard with the Parkway, seeing a cerulean warbler was akin to a miracle,” says Davis. The palm-sized, bright blue, white, and black striped birds have experienced drastic population declines as high as 70 percent since the 1970s, largely due to the loss of preferred Appalachian nesting sites like this one. Efforts spearheaded by Davis and other conservationists to restore, enhance, and protect those habitats are helping spur a comeback.
“A big part of my job is trying to assess all the different types of wildlife in the park and gather information around their numbers and distribution,” says Davis. Accordingly, he’ll spend the next few hours scouring the woods for signs of breeding birds, including ceruleans. The observations contribute to a body of data used to inform species-specific management practices and interventions throughout the park.
While Davis’ workdays share a similar theme, they’re rarely the same. Tomorrow could find him helping one of the park’s 400 or so agricultural lessees coordinate hay harvests to create more breeding areas for threatened grassland birds like bobolinks, American kestrels, and eastern meadowlarks. The next day, Davis may hike deep into the far Southwest Virginia mountains to check on a restoration effort in a rare, high-elevation bog habitat—fewer than 80 acres remain in the state—and the endangered southern Appalachian bog turtles that call it home.
In fact, three decades of work on the iconic, 469-mile byway have carried Davis to just about every square foot of ridgeline, forest, waterway, canyon, and vista within its boundaries—and brought unparalleled knowledge of its habitat and wildlife.
“There are times when I’m driving home after a long day and almost have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming,” he says. “It’s hard to fathom that I’ve had the opportunity to spend so much time in this amazing place and dedicate my career to trying to help change it for the better.”
And positive changes there have been. For instance, when Davis arrived in 1994, not only did the park have no comprehensive plan for effectively managing flora and fauna, there wasn’t even information that would make it possible to create a plan.
“Basically you had rangers in every district just sort of arbitrarily doing their own thing with little to no overarching collaboration or guidelines,” he explains. One might focus conservation efforts and resources on amphibious reptiles like the famed eastern red-spotted newt while totally neglecting birds. Another might solely attend to popular game species like turkey, quail, grouse, pheasant, and deer. “That meant you could have great data about how a species was doing in this or that area or range,”
says Davis, “but no grasp of how it was faring overall.”
Davis was hired to help change all that.
“It was a time of tremendous transformation, and the goal was to usher the Parkway into its next evolution,” he says. Forests that had been replanted after the park’s formation in the 1930s were entering maturity. Wildlife displaced by logging and inefficient agricultural practices was returning. Meanwhile, the National Park Service was buying droves of adjacent land from retiring farmers to protect it from future development. Resources were pouring in, and a new generation of admins wanted to leverage them to maximize conservation impacts.
Davis and a team of four biologists were subsequently tapped to conduct the first comprehensive wildlife survey in park history. Together they combed nearly 100,000 acres of public land, tallying plants, animals, and habitat. The data they collected ultimately revolutionized Parkway management strategies and laid the groundwork for major conservation successes. Davis was able to compare what was happening in the park to changes on a regional or national scale and then funnel resources to target threatened species that needed the most help.
Early efforts focused on emblematic inhabitants like black bears and bald eagles.
“Early on I might see one or two bears a year in far Southwest Virginia and that was it,” says Davis. Eagles were rarer still. But efforts like reforestation, targeted habitat enhancement, reintroduction, and careful monitoring bolstered a comeback. In 1970, there were an estimated 75 bears living in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, “but now I’m dealing with them on an almost daily basis. And the same is true for bald eagles.”
Another obvious success is elk, which were originally hunted to extinction in Virginia by the early 1800s. Now a herd of about 200 roams freely in the state’s far southwestern mountains. Then there’s the ongoing effort to reintroduce the once abundant American red wolf, which is currently the most endangered mammal in North America.
“From a professional standpoint, I can’t begin to describe how gratifying it’s been to play a part in all of this,” says Davis, adding that on a more personal note, “Rationally, I know I worked hard and paid my dues to get where I am, but I still wake up most mornings feeling like I hit the lottery. Work isn’t something I have to do, it’s something I get to do.”
Eastern red spotted newt
Cerulean warblers have made a noticeable comeback since Davis began assessing wildlife in the Shenandoah Valley.
This article originally appeared in the August 2024 issue.
