Weighing Good Intentions

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Speaker 4 It's 1972. A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes.
Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 4 All they have left is a life raft and each other.

Speaker 4 This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive, hosted by me, Becky Milligan. Listen to Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House.

Speaker 4 Follow and listen on Apple podcasts.

Speaker 5 The Who's Down and Who Newville were making their list, but some didn't know. Walmart has the best brands for their gifts.

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Speaker 5 So the Who answered questions from friends till they were blue. Each one listened and shouted, from Walmart? Who knew? Shop kissed from top brands for everyone on your list in the Walmart app.

Speaker 3 This is Radiolab. I'm Lulu Miller.

Speaker 3 Over the last few months, as we've been watching public lands come under peril, massive cuts to the National Park Service, proposals to sell off millions of acres of public lands being debated, I keep thinking about this one moment.

Speaker 3 In a piece I reported about 15 years ago in a kitchen in rural Michigan, I encountered one of the best defenses of conservation I've ever heard.

Speaker 3 And it came from such an unexpected person that it was almost like a jump scare. Anyway, I'm saying too much, so I'm going to turn it over now to OG host of this here program, Jada Bumrod,

Speaker 3 for a story we called Weighing Good Intentions.

Speaker 7 Wait, you're listening.

Speaker 6 You're listening

Speaker 6 to Radio Lab.

Speaker 6 Radio Lab from

Speaker 8 WNYC.

Speaker 9 Rewind.

Speaker 8 Okay, so set up this story. This story happens

Speaker 6 where?

Speaker 3 It's in a little town in northern Michigan called Mayo. 7 a.m.
Just drove through the Delaware Water Gap. That's me on my way out there from New York.
The sun is rising and...

Speaker 3 It's about an 800-mile drive. And it's just gorgeous out here.

Speaker 10 Hey, listen to you.

Speaker 8 Lush and all into the outdoors.

Speaker 6 Nauseating. Yeah, a little bit of a nice little dude.

Speaker 3 I know, but I'm just one of those people. I open my windows and when I get out into nature,

Speaker 3 I feel my place in the world

Speaker 3 anyway just crossed into Mayo so you get there yep what was the reason you were going again to see a bird

Speaker 3 a very not just rare not just the kind of bird birders get obsessed about but this is a bird this is what they call a life bird a life bird birders wait their life to see it really yeah Only found right here.

Speaker 8 What's the bird called?

Speaker 3 The Kirtland warbler.

Speaker 6 So now have you seen a Kirtlands before?

Speaker 3 No, I've never seen one. This is my first trip up here.

Speaker 8 This right here, where are you?

Speaker 3 We're just outside of the town on the edge of the forest, about to go in, and I'm standing with about 15 people who've come from everywhere. Where are you folks coming from? To see this bird.
Toledo.

Speaker 11 I'm from South Carolina.

Speaker 12 We're from Oregon, South Dakota.

Speaker 6 Dayton, Ohio area.

Speaker 13 Wyoming.

Speaker 3 We'll walk out to a spot, try to stay single file. Park Ranger leads us down the path into a little clearing.

Speaker 6 And pretty immediately in the background there. way back there

Speaker 3 a guy from Ohio spots a curtland there he is yeah

Speaker 3 a tiny yellow bird back there right there up high in a jackpine tree oh yeah oh great it's singing like crazy a lady from Dayton starts clapping can you describe what you're seeing

Speaker 14 I see a lovely bird with a gray back this is a guy from Oregon Jim Coleman

Speaker 3 and his wife Rita smaller than a robin

Speaker 14 beautiful yellow throat and breast Brilliant yellow.

Speaker 13 And so in the sunlight, it's just an absolutely radiant bird.

Speaker 6 Is this worth the trip to Morgan?

Speaker 12 Oh, you bet.

Speaker 9 I don't know. It just makes me thankful that I'm here.

Speaker 9 And it makes me grateful that my wife is here. I know this is something she's wanted to see for a long time.

Speaker 3 Jim actually starts to tear up.

Speaker 9 This is a very special bird.

Speaker 3 Oh, my ham.

Speaker 3 And that's what this story is really about.

Speaker 3 How special is this bird? Meaning.

Speaker 3 Well, how much is a species worth?

Speaker 3 Well, here's the backstory.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 3 In the early 70s, the warbler almost went extinct.

Speaker 6 Want to go in? Okay.

Speaker 3 The reason why it was thought

Speaker 3 was because of a little creature called the cowbird.

Speaker 11 It's not doing anything good. It's just just a parasite, you know, and some and like

Speaker 10 this is Chris Mensing, Fish and Wildlife Biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Speaker 3 And we're standing in this cage full of cowbirds.

Speaker 11 Or it looks like we've got six males and one female.

Speaker 6 Let me grab a couple.

Speaker 3 He just reached out and grabbed two of them.

Speaker 15 You're good at that.

Speaker 10 And the males?

Speaker 10 Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 6 What do they look like?

Speaker 3 It's like, imagine a tiny little gnarly crow. They've got really sharp little beaks, but with this curled beak.

Speaker 11 It has a very drab body, very dull.

Speaker 3 So here's what the cowbert does to the warbler. While the warbler is out of its nest.

Speaker 8 Like getting a worm or something?

Speaker 3 Yeah, the cowbert lays one of its own eggs in the nest.

Speaker 3 To make room for it so the warbler doesn't know anything is up, it pushes out one of the warbler's eggs.

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 6 Get out of the nest.

Speaker 10 And the timing is such that the cowbert egg will hatch first.

Speaker 11 and will double its size in 24 hours. So by the time that the hostbirds hatch, that cowberg may be up to four times the size.

Speaker 11 And when they start begging for food from the parents, the loudest, the most aggressive chick is going to get fed, the cowbird chick.

Speaker 8 So, the warbler mom ends up shoveling food into this cowbird chick? Yep.

Speaker 3 And oftentimes, it gets so much food that another warbler chick will die. Really?

Speaker 3 Yeah. So, when the cowbirds first showed up in this area in the late 1800s, early 1900s, the warbler population just started plummeting.

Speaker 11 This huge drop.

Speaker 3 By 1971, there are only

Speaker 11 200 males on Earth.

Speaker 6 well

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 3 what do you do

Speaker 3 are you asking me

Speaker 3 um i guess you gotta kill the cowbirds exactly um this is one of 54 traps it's a new one that we just built this year which is why we're out in this cage it's actually a cowbird trap oh run cowbird run she did

Speaker 11 yeah she'd bite me they uh just like anyone if you had someone larger grabbing you they don't appreciate it too much and so anyone know how they kill them i kind of do yeah thoracic compression is the term we use we basically squeeze the bird suffocating it, preventing it from breathing.

Speaker 6 Just with your hands? There's no

Speaker 3 like all the time? Yeah.

Speaker 14 Did you see this? No.

Speaker 3 But 1972, Fish and Wildlife Service sets up a bunch of traps. A few years, and about 12,000 dead cowbirds later.

Speaker 1 It works.

Speaker 1 Kind of.

Speaker 15 The population stopped dying off, but then it didn't start bouncing back.

Speaker 19 What's going on?

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 19 Why aren't we seeing bigger numbers now that we're catching the cowbirds?

Speaker 3 That's Rita Halbison. She worked with the Forest Service back in the 80s.

Speaker 19 And we thought, well, we finally concluded it must be

Speaker 19 just there is not enough habitat.

Speaker 8 Like they don't have enough trees?

Speaker 3 Is that what you're saying? Well, no, there are plenty of trees, but the thing about warblers is they like a specific kind of tree. They like them very young.

Speaker 6 That was weird.

Speaker 6 I could feel it as I was saying it.

Speaker 15 They like them young.

Speaker 8 No, but they like young trees, is what you're saying.

Speaker 10 Yep.

Speaker 8 And there aren't young trees in this place?

Speaker 3 No, it's really weird. When they started looking around this forest, they noticed all the trees were really, really old.

Speaker 6 Why?

Speaker 8 Why wouldn't there be young trees?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 6 us.

Speaker 20 Only you. Can prevent forest toil and extreme speed.

Speaker 15 Hey, hey, Smokey Bear.

Speaker 3 See, when humans began to settle in this area of Michigan in about the 1880s, they brought with them that certain human disdain for fire.

Speaker 20 Only you can prevent forest fires.

Speaker 3 But fire is exactly what's needed up there to make new trees.

Speaker 11 Yeah, this ecosystem is a fire ecosystem.

Speaker 10 Says Chris. It burns.

Speaker 3 Because when these trees burn, they release their seeds and make room for new trees to grow.

Speaker 11 It is a fire ecosystem. It is made to burn.

Speaker 3 So, I ask you again, what do you do?

Speaker 8 Do you start fires? Would that be the solution?

Speaker 3 That would be the solution.

Speaker 19 So, the Forest Service started doing what we call a prescribed burn.

Speaker 3 Basically, says Rita, they burned down a little patch of forest.

Speaker 19 A few acres.

Speaker 3 And one windy spring day in 1980 at a place called Mack Lake,

Speaker 3 the Forest Service started a fire that they probably shouldn't have.

Speaker 22 Okay, my name is Dick Lord.

Speaker 22 And I, at the time of the Mack Lake fire, I was part of the ignition crew for the prescribed burn.

Speaker 3 What is an ignition crew?

Speaker 22 They light the fire.

Speaker 3 So at 10 in the morning, Dick and his crew go out into the woods,

Speaker 3 start setting up perimeters, and they begin lighting a few stands of shrubs.

Speaker 16 I was driving home.

Speaker 3 That's Bob Berner, best name ever for a firefighter.

Speaker 16 I could see the Forest Service starting to do a burn. And I thought, this is not a good time.

Speaker 3 It was windy.

Speaker 16 They didn't have the manpower.

Speaker 10 And I said, we'll probably be getting called out here shortly.

Speaker 22 Basically, Basically, we did not realize that the weather was going to change as rapidly as it did.

Speaker 19 The wind came up suddenly, something nobody could predict, and it took the fire across the road into a stand of mature jackpine and took off.

Speaker 22 There are flames

Speaker 22 probably 100 to 150 feet in the air.

Speaker 16 The sound is like a roaring train.

Speaker 3 The forest guys jump into their bulldozers, trying to plow trenches alongside the fire.

Speaker 22 Pinch it off. And I mean, you could feel the heat.
It was way out of our control, hitting the tops of the trees, rolling.

Speaker 22 I knew at the rate it was traveling that, you know, it's going to be a major catastrophe.

Speaker 3 Within six hours, it had burned over 20,000 acres. It's one of the fastest moving fires ever documented.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I went through here. As far as you can see, it was all black.

Speaker 3 These are two guys

Speaker 3 who owned houses in the area that got burnt.

Speaker 16 Remember the guy down there in the corner, garage was all burned up, black, charred.

Speaker 3 Their houses were okay, but 41 houses were destroyed.

Speaker 10 All the way up to the lake. It was just completely.

Speaker 16 Yeah, wasn't nothing green,

Speaker 10 like something out of a moonscape.

Speaker 11 As far as you can see, everything gone.

Speaker 19 And the worst part about it for all of us

Speaker 19 was that it killed one of the Forest Service employees, a very young wildlife technician who was very well loved by his co-workers.

Speaker 3 A guy named Jim Swydersky.

Speaker 22 You know, Jim was a good friend.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 22 As well as an employee.

Speaker 3 Dick Lord again, Jim's boss. He told me that Jim had been a postman for a few years, but just loved birds so much that he took a huge pay cut to come and help protect the warbler.

Speaker 22 Basically what happened was

Speaker 22 the fire overran him.

Speaker 19 Oh, the press was having a heyday, just tearing into the Forest Service for what had happened.

Speaker 22 The townspeople were very angry at the Forest Service.

Speaker 19 How could you do this?

Speaker 3 Rita says they were told not to wear their Forest Service uniforms in town.

Speaker 19 Gosh, it was so terrible.

Speaker 3 And the forest itself, you know, there was nothing there. It was completely silent.

Speaker 3 But a year later...

Speaker 3 A little bit of green started to poke up. And the next year, a little bit bit more.

Speaker 19 Eight to ten years after that MacLake burn, just seemed like everywhere you turned around. You'd stop for a listen.

Speaker 19 There were five or six birds. A tremendous number of warblers.

Speaker 3 That was the answer to the mystery.

Speaker 10 The fire. You know, if you look at a population graph

Speaker 11 after that MacLake burn, population went like that.

Speaker 3 He points his hand straight up.

Speaker 11 So it's pretty dramatic.

Speaker 3 And today,

Speaker 3 the numbers are up to almost 4,000 birds.

Speaker 2 Ah, there he is. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And growing.

Speaker 9 Singing like crazy.

Speaker 3 Now that the birds are back,

Speaker 3 but a man is gone.

Speaker 3 When you walk around this town, a question lingers in the air.

Speaker 21 Is the life of a fireman worth the life of a bird?

Speaker 3 That question right after the break.

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Speaker 1 Radiolab is supported by Apple TV. It's 1972.
A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes. Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 1 All they have left is a life raft and each other. How will they survive? The true story of a family's fight for survival, hosted by Becky Milligan.

Speaker 1 This is Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House. Apple TV subscribers get special early access to the entire season.
Follow and listen on Apple podcasts.

Speaker 3 Lulu Radiolab. Just before the break, a well-intentioned fire had turned deadly, and it left a town wondering.

Speaker 21 Is the life of a fireman worth the life of a bird?

Speaker 6 Oh,

Speaker 6 take a look. Take a look.

Speaker 10 Is it? That's incredible.

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 23 In my opinion, it isn't.

Speaker 3 This is Ed Fawcett.

Speaker 17 I wouldn't trade your life for a bird.

Speaker 3 I'm sitting with him and his wife, Mary Jane.

Speaker 6 Amen. Amen.

Speaker 3 In a diner. And no matter where you go in this town,

Speaker 16 what's the government doing?

Speaker 3 People don't tend to be huge fans of the warbler.

Speaker 10 It's just a small bird.

Speaker 3 And I've been up here since 1968. I've never seen one.

Speaker 6 Did you ever see one? No. Never have I seen one.

Speaker 10 I've never seen one. No.

Speaker 3 And back to Ed.

Speaker 14 I just got to say to you, what would you think about it if your father

Speaker 17 or brother were killed in a useless fire for a bird?

Speaker 21 It'd be pretty hard to accept, wouldn't it?

Speaker 3 But if you zoom out,

Speaker 3 one human life versus the end of a species.

Speaker 23 Do you know how many warblers there are in the United States?

Speaker 23 I think there's something like 37 species of warblers.

Speaker 3 The real number is actually closer to 60.

Speaker 23 That's kind of ridiculous.

Speaker 3 And that's not all.

Speaker 11 They ask you, well, when are you done? And we really say never.

Speaker 3 Chris explained to me that they have to keep killing the cowbirds and they have to keep doing burns, smaller burns, but every single year.

Speaker 11 If we let things be, the bird would be extinct. Wow.
That's the hard thing about this job is knowing that we're never done.

Speaker 3 How many people are working? How much...

Speaker 11 You're probably looking at hundreds of people. Dollars, you know, we could be looking at, you know, well over a million dollars a year spent.

Speaker 3 And all this began to really sink in on one of my last mornings out there.

Speaker 6 All right, it is five in the morning.

Speaker 3 It was the annual Kirtland Warbler Census.

Speaker 3 where birders from all over the world show up to help count how many warblers there are out there is it like there's a warbler step step step step there's a warbler yeah that's actually exactly how it works i was paired up with this guy dave mendis we're gonna kind of walk through the middle of these transects we're gonna come up he's he's kind of a dude dude he's an older guy got a beard i work for an electrical contractor told me he's got a man room man man room you know most guys got sports but i've got kirtland's warbler pictures up on the the wall.

Speaker 25 Nice.

Speaker 15 So I went into it thinking, like, this will be really cool.

Speaker 6 We'll march along.

Speaker 15 We'll count them.

Speaker 3 I looked at the map. It was a mile, maybe, of a walk.
We'll be done in 20 minutes. Well, okay, maybe not.
We're walking through the forest on our tops.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 we set off.

Speaker 3 Dense, brambly forest. Still dark.

Speaker 6 That was a hermit thrush.

Speaker 3 And let me just play you a quick little time lapse.

Speaker 25 20 to 7 7 right now. The sun's just coming up, and it's getting a little muggy out here.

Speaker 6 That was a curtains.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Yep.

Speaker 25 We can't count him, though. He's not in our section.

Speaker 6 707. I heard one way back that way.
Yeah. Yeah, there he is again.

Speaker 25 But I'm not going to mark him in because I don't know exactly where he's at.

Speaker 20 733.

Speaker 16 There he goes. Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yep. Right there.
So do you count him now?

Speaker 6 No, no, no.

Speaker 10 No, we want to be a lot more accurate than just to say we know there's one up there.

Speaker 18 We want to triangulate them.

Speaker 6 9.56 and all's well in the warbler woods. Good.
A couple of ants are biting me. Yeah.
They hurt, don't they? They do a little bit. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Get out of there.

Speaker 25 10.45 a.m.

Speaker 10 I know that there's a bird out there.

Speaker 26 I can still hear that bird way back there.

Speaker 3 So we ended up staying out there for seven and a half hours.

Speaker 3 We just marked one, right?

Speaker 6 Yep, I've only marked one.

Speaker 3 And I don't mean to sound like I'm making fun of Dave. I mean, he's doing his job well.
But at some point in between the fire ants and taking four hours to confirm this one bird.

Speaker 6 He's going to be right off over here.

Speaker 3 I just started thinking about all the effort it takes.

Speaker 14 Two rows of trees over from us and we can't see him.

Speaker 3 And I just suddenly thought,

Speaker 3 It's this fussy, fragile little bird and it hasn't evolved. Who cares?

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 6 this is not worth it.

Speaker 3 And so I started asking people who protect the bird, why do that with so much money? And it's all for a bird.

Speaker 3 And I could see it maybe if it was for some, but it's just one warbler of 18 million different kinds of warblers. Like, why do it?

Speaker 11 Well, we do it because we should. You know, we're stewards of the land.

Speaker 3 That's Chris Mensing again, cowbird killer.

Speaker 11 It's for future generations.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 here's the fire starter, Dick Lord.

Speaker 22 You know, the Kirtlands warbler was listed under the

Speaker 22 Endangered Species Act, and we had a charge under the law to do what we could to recover its existence. And that's the only thing that I can say that,

Speaker 22 you know, we had to do what the law required us to do.

Speaker 3 So we should do it, and the law tells us we have to do it.

Speaker 3 Unconvincing. And that question.

Speaker 21 Is the life of a fireman worth the life of a bird?

Speaker 3 And that guy Ed at the diner, it just stuck in my mind.

Speaker 3 And I realized I couldn't leave this town until I talked to the people who lost the most. Can I just get you to introduce yourselves?

Speaker 6 Full name. Yeah, sure.

Speaker 27 Robert Swaidersky, age 54. Kathleen Swajdersky.

Speaker 24 Florence Swaidersky.

Speaker 21 The mother.

Speaker 22 And the mother of James

Speaker 24 Swajursky.

Speaker 8 The guy who died?

Speaker 22 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 16 On iced tea or water or anything?

Speaker 3 We're all sitting around the kitchen table.

Speaker 7 There's a lot of hot dogs and beer over there.

Speaker 3 Jim's brother-in-law is there too.

Speaker 26 Soft Calvin. Calvin de Bree.

Speaker 3 And I asked them to tell me about Jim.

Speaker 6 Quite a guy.

Speaker 7 Soft-spoken.

Speaker 7 Smart.

Speaker 6 Quite a character. Yup.

Speaker 3 They told me at first they were furious.

Speaker 27 They should have never, ever sent him in there.

Speaker 3 Angry at the Forest Service, angry about this bird.

Speaker 6 Very angry. Now,

Speaker 3 three decades later.

Speaker 26 I say you keep that little bird going.

Speaker 16 Exactly.

Speaker 6 Really?

Speaker 3 Then Jim's younger brother, Robert,

Speaker 3 said that the thing he wanted the most is for the Kirtlands Warbler to become the state bird.

Speaker 27 That would be the ultimate. That would be the biggest accomplishment ever would be that being a state bird.
Wow,

Speaker 3 I guess in some ways I'm surprised. I

Speaker 3 didn't mean to come here with expectations, but in some ways I thought if it was my family that I would hate that bird, but I would just hate that bird.

Speaker 6 No, it's not the bird.

Speaker 27 I mean, that bird didn't do anything to any of us.

Speaker 8 You know, if we can keep it going, I mean, that's what he set out to do.

Speaker 27 Let's keep it going.

Speaker 3 They think about Jim's death. Any of the military guys? Like the death of a soldier.

Speaker 7 Where would you be sitting right now if we would have lost all those soldiers in World War I, World War II?

Speaker 3 That he died

Speaker 6 protecting us.

Speaker 23 You know, it's only one species.

Speaker 28 Well, then it's going to be another species, and another species, and another species.

Speaker 10 Next thing you know, you walk out in the morning and it'll be quiet.

Speaker 26 Thank God for Teddy Roosevelt and the boys that made our national parks.

Speaker 28 Imagine what if we didn't have those.

Speaker 7 It costs money, it's painful, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 26 So you gotta have the guts to do that.

Speaker 10 And Jim was really that kind of guy.

Speaker 8 Wow, that is convincing. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But, I mean, do you agree for us? And I asked the mom. What can I say?

Speaker 10 The birds are coming back, but the life life is gone.

Speaker 24 So, why bring it up again? It's done.

Speaker 24 You can't bring it back, so you have to live with it, but there's always a hole in your heart.

Speaker 24 Something that none of us will ever forget forever.

Speaker 13 And don't ask me any more questions, please.

Speaker 3 And then, if ever there was a sign to just turn off the darn mic,

Speaker 3 oh, the power goes out.

Speaker 3 Let me go home and get the generator.

Speaker 6 I think we're done.

Speaker 6 Pretty dark.

Speaker 3 Okay, Lulu from 2025 here again.

Speaker 3 Since I reported this story in 2010, a couple things have changed for that little bird. The biggest thing is that in 2019, the U.S.

Speaker 3 Fish and Wildlife Service officially removed the Kirtlands warbler from the endangered species list. That meant the bird had surpassed recovery goals.

Speaker 3 Since then, the population has begun to decline again, but the Michigan Department of Natural Resources say they feel confident they have the tools and resources to stabilize the population.

Speaker 3 And one more thing. A few years back, I called up Robert Swyderski just to check in and ask how Everett was doing.
And he said that his mom, Florence,

Speaker 3 I remember this, he said, she ain't cooking, but she's still kicking.

Speaker 3 At that point, she was 92. Since then, she has passed away.
And a note on her obituary online suggested that in her memory, in lieu of flowers, you might plant a tree.

Speaker 30 Hi, I'm Victor from Springfield, Missouri, and here are the staff credits. RadioLab was created by Jad Abenrod and edited by Sean Wheeler.
Louis Miller and Lassa Nasser are our co-hosts.

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Speaker 1 Radiolab is supported by the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit transforming America's love of nature into action for our forests.

Speaker 1 Did you know that national forests provide clean drinking water to one in three Americans? And when forests struggle, so do we.

Speaker 1 The National Forest Foundation creates lasting impact by restoring forests and watersheds, strengthening wildfire resilience, and expanding recreation access for all.

Speaker 1 Last year, they planted 5.3 million trees and led over 300 projects to protect nature and communities nationwide. Learn more at nationalforests.org/slash radiolive.