Nancy Pau: Resilience champion
At 10 years old, Nancy Pau’s whole world changed when she moved from a small island on the coast of China — with no running water or electricity — to New York City.
“We went from a place where everyone knew each other and kids had free run of the outdoors to one where we were told to lock the doors and not answer the phone,” she said.
She adapted, and eventually thrived, in her new home.
Now a wildlife biologist at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Massachusetts, she works to restore the Great Marsh and make it more resilient to a changing world. In doing so, she hopes to rewrite the life story of the saltmarsh sparrow, a small brown bird that relies on coastal marshes for survival.
A head start in science
Pau’s strong science and math skills landed her an internship working on the human genome at Iowa State University during her sophomore year in high school. The next year, she studied turf science at Cornell University, returning later to earn her bachelor’s degree in natural resources.
Her Service career began in the Northeast (now North Atlantic-Appalachian) Regional Office in Hadley, Massachusetts, supporting refuge planning and land protection. In 2000, she transferred to the Sacramento Field Office as endangered species biologist for California’s San Joaquin Valley.
Pau was disheartened by the steady loss of habitat for the endangered San Joaquin kit fox. She led negotiations to create a sliding mitigation scale for projects funded or authorized by federal agencies. The method correlates the amount of land that must be protected for the kit fox to the quality of the habitat being disturbed.
“A year later, when Caltrans expanded a highway that would have cut off the northernmost kit fox satellite population, that new compensation policy allowed me to make sure critical migration corridors were protected,” she said.
Revising history
In her 18 years at Parker River Refuge, Pau has focused on restoring the Great Marsh, the largest continuous salt marsh in New England. Nearly 20 percent of the 16,000-acre marsh lies within the refuge.
Over centuries, people drained and divided the marsh, changing its natural tidal flow. This killed marsh plants — through root-exposure in higher areas and standing water in lower ones — leading to lowering of the marsh and loss of its natural ability to absorb storm waters.
Sea-level rise over the last century has made matters worse, and more-frequent intense storms bring destructive tidal surges.
Pau works to restore the marsh’s hydrology and remove perennial pepperweed, an invasive plant that thrives in salty environments and will outcompete native marsh vegetation if not managed.
For the last five years, she’s helped Service biologist Dr. Susan Adamowicz and partners test experimental salt marsh restoration methods at various places on the refuge. These include filling drainage ditches, building up mounds to create microtopography, and digging shallow channels to drain standing water.
“We took time to figure out how certain techniques work with changing environmental conditions and have successfully increased the marsh’s height in certain areas,” she said.
She looks forward to applying all of the methods in an upcoming wholistic restoration of a 100-acre plot on the refuge.
A healthy, more-resilient marsh will benefit wildlife and act as a buffer to protect coastal properties from the sea.
Maintaining sparrow status quo
One species that has a lot to gain from Pau’s work is the saltmarsh sparrow. As American as apple pie, it is found only in tidal marshes along the U.S. East Coast. But scientists estimate its population has dropped 80% in just the last 15 years, due mostly to sea-level rise.
The female sparrow has always faced a time squeeze for rearing her young. After building a nest slung between blades of marsh grass, she must lay eggs and raise chicks to fledging between monthly ultra-high tides that coincide with the full moon. If her timing is off, the eggs and chicks can float away or drown.
With rising seas, the time frame when the tide can reach nests is growing, and the sparrow’s nesting window is shrinking. Without a concerted effort by public and private conservation groups, the species could disappear in the next 50 years.
At Parker River Refuge, the picture is rosier, with sparrow numbers holding steady over the last 20 years. Pau strives to maintain that trend.
“We hope the combination of restoration techniques we’re using will keep the refuge’s sparrow population where it is,” she said.
Making the professional personal
But remember, less than one-fourth of the Great Marsh lies within the refuge. Fortunately, more than half of the marsh is managed by organizations committed to restoration. Pau sees this as an opportunity to create lasting change beyond refuge boundaries.
And that’s where her people skills have paid off. Although trained as a scientist, she understands the value of communication and knows that “data travels further through personal relationships.” She works closely with the other land stewards.
“It’s one thing to manage a refuge, but to affect conservation on a much bigger area feels like I’m really able to make a difference,” she said.
Pau draws motivation from the interactions her job entails.
“In the same day, I could be talking to a Ph.D. about really technical science, mentoring high school students on how they can make a difference in conservation, or just chatting with visitors about our mutual enjoyment of the refuge,” she said.
These conversations keep her optimistic while tackling difficult, long-term conservation issues.
“They give me confidence that we humans can be part of the solution to nature’s challenges,” she said.
Nurturing family and community
When not working, Pau shares outdoor adventures with her husband, two tween sons, and English pointer puppy. She is drawn to “anything to do with food,” including cooking, gardening, and foraging.
“I get a lot of joy from looking at seed catalogs in January and planting a large garden every spring,” she said.
Membership in her local garden club led to working with other residents to combat invasive plants and sustain native landscapes. Her town is blessed with large tracts of forest, grassland, and wetland habitat.
“I’m happy to see more native landscaping in town,” she said. “We need native habitat on private lands to maintain wildlife corridors between larger conservation areas.”
Although far from the small island of her childhood, Nancy Pau has held onto the lessons she absorbed there: there is power in personal connection and possibility in the great outdoors. She has applied them in her personal and professional lives, to the benefit of wild things and people alike.
Read more about Nancy’s saltmarsh sparrow restoration efforts
