FWS Scholar: Randy J. Brown
Randy Brown was born in Arlington, Virginia but grew up in the southwest, mostly in New Mexico, where he developed a love for the outdoors. Randy graduated from Santa Fe Prep School in 1975, at age 17. He briefly attended the University of Alaska-Fairbanks (UAF) for one semester and then left to go live in the woods, build a log cabin, and live off the land for a while. Randy did this in the Yukon River area near the community of Eagle, on the U.S. Canada border, as one of the “back to the land” adventurers that John McPhee wrote about in his book, Coming into the Country. Randy lived in the wilderness for about 15 years, where he developed skills in mushing dogs, building log cabins, sleds, toboggans, birch bark canoes, snowshoes, and other wilderness skills such as hunting, trapping, and fishing. The last ten of those years were with his family, featured as one of four families in the old style National Geographic documentary, Braving Alaska.
“I think the National Geographic Society did a very good job portraying family life in remote wilderness areas of Alaska at the time, and I refer to it affectionately as the original Alaska reality show,” says Randy.
In addition to living in the wilderness, Randy also lived in a number of rural remote villages in “Bush Alaska,” where his wife, Karen, taught school. In 1991, they moved into Fairbanks and he re-enrolled at UAF, where he earned his Bachelor’s in Biology in 1996.
Randy then worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) Fisheries Assistance Office in Fairbanks, doing fisheries work on the Yukon River and elsewhere in northern Alaska. While working there, he pursued a Master’s degree in Fisheries Science, conducting a work-related research project that applied radio telemetry and otolith chemistry technologies to investigate migration dynamics of inconnu (sheefish) in the Yukon River. This initial fisheries work on the Yukon River employed emerging technologies to answer difficult fish migration and habitat use questions, and has given shape to virtually all of his work since then.
In the course of his daily activities as a research biologist, Randy is convinced that the issue being pursued is important, but rarely expects that his work will be recognized beyond a small group of other scientists and local resource users.
In 2007, however, a commercial fishery on Bering Cisco began at the mouth of the Yukon River, Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, supplying a whitefish market in New York City. This was the first time that an Alaska whitefish species was serving a commercial market outside of Alaska, a market that could take far more than Alaska could produce. Randy’s prior work with the Service studying migrations of salmon and whitefish species on the Yukon River made him uniquely positioned to understand the need for a more comprehensive understanding of Bering Cisco life history. Bering Cisco is a small whitefish species related to some of the deep-water Cisco species in the Laurentian Great Lakes, which supplied the east coast commercial market before those species declined several decades ago.
“Our understanding of Bering Cisco populations did not allow for informed management of the fishery, so it was all guesswork in the beginning,” Randy explains.
In 2009, Randy presented this information to the Region 7 Fisheries and Ecological Services ARD, Laverne Smith, and she recognized the importance of the issue. She asked him to develop a research program for Bering Cisco that would improve their understanding of the species and inform the management of the fishery.
“The support I received from Laverne Smith was absolutely pivotal to the initiation of this research effort. I also had the support of my direct supervisor, Jeff Adams, and when one has supervisory support, almost anything is possible.”
Many stakeholders helped provide essential funding and support for the research. Ora Russ, with the Conservation Genetics Laboratory, and Andy Padilla, with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, earned Master’s degrees working on the genetics and otolith chemistry aspects of the research. Several primary publications documented their findings. Together, they improved their understanding of Bering Cisco sufficiently to allow for effective management of the commercial fishery and preserve the existing subsistence fishery as well.
Randy has designed and conducted research for many unanswered questions about distribution, migration, and habitat for many species that are essential to the livelihoods of both subsistence users and commercial fishers. Randy just received the Rachel Carson Award for exemplary scientific accomplishment by applying innovative approaches to gain understanding about Bering Cisco.
Randy really enjoys solving mysteries. In Alaska, there’s been so many cases where they would sample fish in a big turbid river and get adults of a species and have no idea where the juveniles were, where the adults were headed, or where they came from. Yet, most of these species were being harvested at great rates along the river and development projects were altering habitats, with no understanding of the potential unintended consequences of these actions. He considered these species to be at some level of peril. Randy is grateful to have had the opportunity with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to pursue answers to the life history questions that will help us preserve these great fishery resources.
From a personal standpoint, Randy still practices many of the activities he learned while living in the wilderness during the 1970s and 1980s. He’s still married to his wonderful wife, Karen. He still has some big huskies although he doesn’t mush them anymore. He still carves wooden bowls and builds dog sleds, birch bark canoes, and log cabins. Randy uses a canoe to hunt moose each fall in his old stomping ground on the Yukon River. He loves camping on a gravel bar, cooking over a driftwood fire, and watching a nice sunset.
“Life has changed over the years, and it is still very rich and satisfying. I’m 62 years old right now, and some are asking when I’m planning to retire. However, I’m still very satisfied with my work and until that changes, or I get where I cannot be effective at it, I’ll be pursing answers to more of the challenging fishery questions that we still face in Alaska.”
His most recent paper, “Morphological Variability Among Spawning Populations of Bering Cisco,” was published in the Journal of Copeia. Click here for publications that came directly from the Bering Cicso research program. To learn more about Randy’s work, check out more of his publications here; discoverable via USFWS Conservation Library. #FWSscholar
