Glacier's 'Bird Lady' giving a voice to the park's smaller creatures

Few people know the birds and bats of Glacier National Park like Lisa Bate, but there was a time when she questioned if the Crown of Continent was the right place for her.

“At first, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to commute to work here, but after working here for a year I realized this is the most incredible place on Earth to work,” she said. “No two days are the same and it is always an adventure. You never know what you are going to find and you never know what is going to happen. It’s such a privilege and an honor to work here.”

As the park’s resident “Bird Lady,” Bate has been studying the animals in the park since her time as a biologist technician in 2008, but her history with animals goes back much further than that.

Bate recalls that, as a child, she would throw a rock wrapped in a sock into the air in the evenings to attract the bats that would swoop through the air near her home in Ohio.

That fascination would lead Bate towards becoming a veterinarian, but she soon found herself learning toward a different career path. After realizing being a vet was not quite what she wanted to do, Bate met a non-game wildlife biologist and soon made a slight change in her field of study.

AFTER FINISHING up her graduate degree at the University of Idaho, Bate found work operating her own consulting company for several years, working mostly with the Forest Service at the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain Research stations helping study cavity nesting species.

When Bate and her husband, an organic farmer, found themselves looking for a place to live that would benefit both of their careers, the Flathead Valley was at the top of the list. Unfortunately, the recession of 2007 took a large bite out of the research funding available to the entities that had worked with Bate in the past, and she soon found herself looking for a new job.

Glacier National Park biologist Steve Gniadek brought Bate onto his team as a technician in 2008 and she became a full-time biologist in 2009 before budget cuts ended her position.

Undeterred, Bate took a position with the Park helping monitor compliance with wildlife and environmental regulations during the reconstruction of the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

“The primary goal of that work is to minimize the impacts on grizzly bears, but we also have goats, sheep, eagles, harlequin ducks, other birds and so much more. It’s simple work in a way, but it is important,” she said. “A lot of it is just making sure they keep their attractants, like food, locked away while they are working up there, but a lot of people don’t know that petroleum products are attractants as well. They are pure calories. Those are the kinds of things we have to look out for.”

IT WASN’T until word came through that a pair of research proposals she had written while working as a biologist had been funded that Bate decided to make an attempt to resurrect the position.

“I went to my division chief and said that when I wrote the proposals, it was with the thought that I would be the one acting as the principal investigator,” Bate said. “To my surprise, I was allowed to do the research and wound up taking the compliance and bird and bat biologist jobs and blending them into one. I’ve been doing both jobs ever since.”

These days, Bate has learned to make the best of her limited budget and, with funding support from the nonprofit Glacier National Park Conservancy, has put together a number of research projects to study species from bats to harlequin ducks to owls and more. Bates said the Conservancy funds most of her wildlife projects.

“I am just so thankful for them and all of the donors that contribute. Thanks to them, I am able to hire some staff, but it is never enough,” she said. “Many of these projects just demand so many people to be able to get them done. It really does take a team to get a lot of this done and I have been lucky enough over the years to have just the best volunteers to help me get these projects done.”

Bate has had as many as 50 volunteers in a single year but estimates she averages between 25 and 30 every year.

“We have been able to build such good relationships with many of them (volunteers), so they know what is expected of them,” she said. “They are so competent that, many times, I can send them out when I can’t go and they get the work done without me. It's a win-win all the way around.”

This year promises even more exciting research for Bate in the park as she and her team will continue studies on boreal and great gray owls, harlequin ducks and black swifts — a mysterious bird that nests behind waterfalls and can fly in excess of 90 miles per hour but has been disappearing at alarming rates over the past half century.

“It’s challenging work, but we are learning so much,” she said. “I just want to make sure that the smaller animals in the park have their voices heard as well, not just the larger wildlife.”

Reporter Jeremy Weber may be reached at 406-758-4446 or jweber@dailyinterlake.com.