“Meet Doug… These Three Trees”
Hi everyone! I’m Doug Gilbert--ecologist and co-founder of Love Our Land. If you have met me, read my work, or attended one of my outings then you can attest to my deep love of nature. It's this love that introduced me to the world of conservation and inspired me to partner with Mike Meldon to create our community conservation organization, Love Our Land. Below I provide a glimpse into who I am and how I ended up being a part of the growing movement to protect nature and enhance its capacity to support a healthy abundance and diversity of organisms.
I’ll start with my adolescence and some of the experiences that fostered my love of nature. During my childhood I spent a great deal of time outdoors exploring the lands and waters of Darke and Preble counties, Ohio, where I was raised. As a rural kid, I spent time in the garden picking strawberries with my grandmother, scouting for white-tailed deer driving down backroads with my grandfather, admiring grasshoppers and other insects with my mother, and searching streambeds for horn coral, trilobites, and other fossils with my father. I was very fortunate to have ample opportunities to connect with nature. One fond memory I have is of when I was around 3 or 4 years old, McDonald’s—of all places—gave away tree seedlings as part of their Arbor Day festivities. My cousin, sister, and I were each given an eastern white pine (Pinus strobus), approximately 8 to 10 inches tall, that we planted in a row at my grandparents’ house. These three trees would be added to the two existing conifers—an eastern white pine and a Norway (Picea abies)—that my mother and aunt planted as children. I recall a great deal of excitement centered around the idea we would be adding to an existing family ‘forest’. To this day I remember the sight of my tiny hands digging a hole into the dark soil, placing the seedling upright, and ultimately burying its roots. I watched as my sister and cousin repeated this with their trees. I remember my grandmother giving each baby tree a big drink from her watering can. She then told us, “And now, we wait.” I did just that, monitoring the growth of these three trees throughout my childhood, visiting them each time I visited my grandparents, until they reached nearly 15 feet in height, tall enough for me to climb them a bit in my early teens. It was an amazing experience knowing that it was because of my family and me that these trees grew and lived here; and was so pleased to think that soon they would produce their own seedlings. Unfortunately, not long after this, my grandparents sold their house to move to a nearby farm where they wished to retire. The new owners of my grandparents' old house wasted no time making the place their own, cutting down the trees and ripping out their roots. When I was told this by my aunt, although I didn’t want to, I had to drive by to see for myself. It was a devastating sight to behold—a lesson in impermanence as well as one in understanding that nothing, no matter how cherished, is safe unless we act to protect it.
That was the first of many losses of nature I have witnessed—some small (e.g., a reclaimed meadow off Loveland-Madeira lost to commercial development) and some large (e.g., entire mountains and the life they supported blown up and bull dozed into nearby streams, all to extract a small amount of coal), each with its own ramifications for the communities where they occurred. Each loss has galvanized my ambition to help communities be wise stewards of the ecosystems that support them. I knew that a necessary step in this process was educating myself about ecology and conservation. In high school I attended a junior vocational school—Miami Valley Career Technology Center (MVCTC)—where my core curriculum focused on environmental science. This was my introduction to the scientific study of nature. I learned a great deal about the variety of life native to eastern North America and found myself to be particularly fond of birds. Additionally, I gained skills that allowed me to examine and understand relationships between human actions and the health of our environment. My home life was particularly turbulent throughout my time at MVCTC, but I found solace in taking strolls through the fields and forests comprising the school’s land lab. The noise I experienced at home was muted among the foliage of sugar maples (Acer saccharum), white oaks (Quercus alba), mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum), and more—I could think clearly. This healing power of nature was another quality that attracted me to protecting green spaces; I wanted, no, I needed, everyone to be able to find refuge in the wild that remains dotted across our anthropogenic landscape.
Upon graduating, I spent two summers working with Five Rivers MetroParks in Englewood, Ohio at Aullwood Garden MetroPark. My knowledge of plants expanded considerably during this time. Not only did I learn the identity of a couple hundred species, I learned how to care for them and be their steward. It is one thing to walk by a patch of Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) and admire their beauty; it is another thing entirely to stand before them knowing you are their caretaker. Caring for the botanical garden was a responsibility that I accepted with pride and enthusiasm. It was my time as this area’s steward that solidified my decision to seek higher education.
At the end of my second summer with Aullwood Garden MetroPark I embarked on the next chapter of my journey and attended Hocking College in southeastern Ohio—located approximately 15 minutes north of Athens—where I majored in Wildlife Science. Here I increased and enhanced my knowledge of the natural world, studying birds, trees, and other biota and their ecological interactions in greater depth. I was asked by multiple instructors to assist them in helping other students with course material—primarily with learning the natural history of and how to identify Ohio’s flora and fauna. Beyond natural history, management of habitats was an emphasis of the curriculum. This was a critical piece of my development as an ecologist because prior to this all I had known about protecting nature was preservation; in other words, a “hands-off” approach to conservation. While this method is popular among the general population, those with an ecological education can easily explain why this approach is not suited for many habitat types, especially those afflicted by nonnative invasive species. It is the appropriate type and level of manipulation of a landscape that determines the type and amount of wildlife said landscape can support. The intensity and frequency of habitat manipulation/management a particular area needs varies from habitat type to habitat type. For example, grasslands and prairies in eastern North America require relatively frequent disturbances (e.g., fire; grazing/trampling by large herbivores—think bison), whereas mature forests require fewer disruptions to maintain the desired state of habitat. Such manipulation is necessary to sustain populations of species that would disappear if the habitats they depend on slowly transition to another habitat type (e.g., prairie becomes dominated by trees and shrubs, becoming a forest). This is especially true in eastern North America where we’ve 1) lost most natural areas to development and associated infrastructure, 2) degraded what habitat remains, and 3) lost the primary forces of disturbance (e.g., fire; large herbivores) that once maintained a diverse mosaic of habitat types across the landscape. With all this said, Hocking College is where I acquired a great deal of knowledge and skills associated with managing land to promote healthy, robust biodiversity. In fact, its these skills that helped me get hired for my first wildlife research position—a wildlife intern with the Stanislaus National Forest, located in the Sierra Nevada of California, in the summer of 2009. There I spent my time completing nighttime surveys for California spotted owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis) and daytime surveys for northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis). This experience was my first time in the western United States, and I was in awe of the vast forests of the Sierra Nevada. Seeing such seemingly untouched forest inspired me to work harder to get to a point in which I could be capable of saving and protecting such landscapes.
Following my graduation from Hocking College I decided to enroll in the Wildlife and Fisheries Resources program at West Virginia University (WVU) in Morgantown, West Virginia. While Hocking College had focused a great deal on equipping students with field-oriented skills, WVU emphasized understanding the complex inner workings of ecology and the ramifications of human actions on fish and wildlife populations. It was during my time here that I became acquainted with one of the most environmentally destructive forms of energy extraction our industrial civilization has brought into existence—mountain top removal coal mining. It is quite difficult to put into words just how devastating this practice is on local and regional environments. Imagine a mountain. Now imagine that somewhere within the mountain is a seam of coal. Often due to the coal being too close to the surface to create a deep mine, the coal is extracted using mountaintop removal. Above the seam of coal, the coal company sets off explosives—often during times of year when black bears and other wildlife in the ground hibernating—that turn the mountaintop into rubble (known as “overburden” in the coal world). Large bulldozers then push this overburden into the mountain streams—burying the stream and all the life within them—to get to the coal. The ultrafine particulate matter from the explosions drifts into neighboring communities where it’s been linked to a variety of ailments, including rare cancers. What is left behind is more reminiscent of a moonscape than the temperate forests that once blanketed the mountains. To see an area devastated by mountaintop removal is eye-opening and sobering. It shines a light on the ecological atrocities humans are willing to commit for the sake of expediency. I could speak to this topic for hours, but I won’t do that here. Seeing this awakened a side of me that I had yet to know. Before this I knew I wanted to work to protect and conserve natural spaces, but from the time I saw my first mountaintop removal site I knew I needed to be engaged in the public discussion around how we treat our local environment. I began volunteering for conservation organizations, including a nonprofit watershed group—Friends of Deckers Creek—that I ultimately spent 3 years working with following my graduation from WVU. There I led programs to educate the public regarding the state of the Deckers Creek Watershed, monitored the health of streams, including many affected by acid mine drainage from local coal mines, and worked to procure funding to restore the health of the watershed. Being involved with these community conservation efforts helped me understand how to successfully implement community projects that had a lasting impact on the local environment.
During this time my daughter, Hailie Jude, was born. This unexpected bundle of joy softened my heart and reminded me of the tenderness I had for those young trees I tended to during my childhood. I spent hours thinking about how I wished to make sure the world was a better place for her by the time she was grown. While I loved working with Friends of Deckers Creek, I needed to begin thinking about planning for my daughter’s future—I also had lots of student loan debt and needed to begin to unbury myself from it. A good friend of mine from high school and college reached out to me regarding a position with an environmental consulting firm based in Cincinnati. I knew he had come to love the company and was being paid relatively well—better than my nonprofit salary— so I decided to interview with them in January 2015. I was offered a position which allowed me to move to Cincinnati and be closer to my family. I have been with Environmental Solutions & Innovations since 2015 where I’ve worked on a wide range of projects, including completing surveys across the midwestern and eastern United States for the federally endangered rusty patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis)—a species that now occupies less than 10 percent of its historic range. Additionally, I’ve developed conservation plans to avoid, minimize, and mitigate impacts to rare, threatened, and endangered species. I tend to spend my springs and summers surveying for birds and bees to help clients ensure they do not impact them during construction activities. I’ve had the pleasure to work with bats, reptiles, amphibians, freshwater mussels, land snails, rare plants, and much more.
I met my incredible wife, Michelle, and her daughter, Madelyn, at the end of 2017 around the time I was moving to Loveland. Truly, the moment I saw Michelle I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her—she’s an amazing human. We soon moved in together and that sealed my fate—Loveland would be my home; at least until our daughters—both the same age—were grown. I began visiting the various green spaces throughout Loveland and quickly noticed that, like all areas in southwest Ohio, they needed some love. I began researching what I could do to get involved with the Loveland community, which is when I stumbled upon an online video of Mike Meldon speaking to city council about a lack of foresight, particularly using LEED standards, regarding the design of a new city building. His passion and competence lead me to reach out to learn more about him and how he became involved with the community. He told me of Loveland’s Tree & Environment Committee and asked if I’d like to come sit in at a meeting. I responded that I would and asked if I could speak about community conservation in Loveland. He agreed and I met the group and discussed the types of activities that I felt would benefit Loveland’s green spaces. There was a great deal of interest from the committee members and I was asked to apply to be a full-fledged member of the Tree & Environment Committee shortly after. I’ve been a member since 2019 and have worked with the Committee and our wonderful City to take some bold steps towards creating a community that strives to coexist harmoniously with nature. We’ve established pollinator plantings, reforestation plots, eradicated nonnative invasive vegetation in sections of multiple green spaces, and have helped maintain Loveland’s designation as a Tree City USA. There is much left to do, and I am still working as a member of the Tree & Environment Committee.
It became clear over time that we needed to focus efforts on working with the citizens of Loveland that own the vast majority of the land in the City (~85%). It's in these spaces that property owners can play a major role in the regeneration of biodiversity. Currently, much of this land is dominated by nonnative invasive vegetation and/or lawns that cannot support a robust and healthy amount of biodiversity. Rather native wildflowers, vines, shrubs, and trees are needed to promote healthy ecosystems. Mike and I felt that we may better work to achieve goals to enhance biodiversity on private lands as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Mike filled out the paperwork and we received word in February 2022 that Love Our Land was approved. Since then we’ve been working to raise awareness about the important role citizens can play in regenerating biodiversity by replacing nonnative plants with native species that serve as host plants, sources of nectar, pollen, and seeds, and browse for various wildlife. Our ambitious initiative to establish a native plant nursery will help ensure all interested citizens of Loveland and beyond have access to native plants so that they may realize their potential as conservation champions.
I appreciate you taking the time to read this lengthy bio. Hopefully it provides a little bit of insight into who I am and why I choose to focus my spare time on community conservation. I hope you’ll decide to come to one of our many events this year and come introduce yourself to me. Now that you know a little about me, I’d love to learn more about you and your desire to help nature.
-Doug
