The end of an era

The beginning of Kim Delozier’s 30 years in the Park Service may not seem auspicious but it was certainly exciting. In 1978 the park’s hog control program was in its infancy. “The park didn’t know what to do,” Delozier said, “basically anyone working in the park would shoot a hog if they saw one, nothing was working and the population was growing.”

Delozier’s resource during that first year was a renowned poacher turned hog-controller, Buck Branum.

“He was my mentor,” said Delozier. “Things were pretty primitive. We made hog traps out of shark nets, dyed them green in a 55-gallon drum and packed them into hog country on our backs. Once on site, we constructed doors from saplings and parachute cord – and we had a primitive but successful pig trap.”

Camping conditions could be unsettling at times, as well. “We had a huge fuel drum that we stored our food in,” Delozier said. “Sometimes, at night, a bear would come up and just bang that drum trying to get in. That would bounce you about six inches off your sleeping mat.”

Delozier said they had to work in pairs because most of the work was done at night and there was a shooter and someone to hold the light. Today, Delozier’s technicians hit the woods with night vision goggles and thermal imaging could be available in the future.

Night vision goggles, per diem, and night-differential pay scales are just a few of the innovations that have come along since Delozier took that first $4.50/hour seasonal hog hunting job.

Kim Delozier is an anachronism, a throw back to a simpler time. A time when home and family and a sense of place were paramount. A time when a young man with conviction, enthusiasm, and skill could take a science degree from the University of Tennessee and become a wildlife biologist at one of the largest and most visited national parks in the country. 

Delozier has spent his entire 30-year career at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park which straddles East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. He still lives with his wife of 31 years, Donna, in the small unincorporated hamlet of Seymour, Tenn., where he grew up on his family’s small farm.

“It’s a great neighborhood, but I have to keep an eye on my neighbors,” he joked. 

His dad lives on one side, and his brother lives on the other. His son Travis teaches agricultural science at Seymour High School along with Mike Delozier, Kim’s brother. His daughter, Carrie, and her husband just relocated to Seymour from Raleigh, N.C., to be near family.

“I went to the highway and turned right and went to the University of Tennessee and got my degree,” Delozier said. “When I finished I went to the highway and turned left and went to the park and got a job.”

He’s eyeing retirement in two more years. “I think I’m ready,” he said. “I feel like I’ve done most things in this field that anyone could ever hope to do.” 

And he did them his way because there was no template to follow. When Delozier accepted a position as a wildlife handler in 1980, he was one of four hires. 

“My supervisor, Stu Coleman, told me, ‘I’m gonna offer you a position, but I don’t recommend you accept it,” Delozier recalled. When he asked his future boss why, Coleman said there would be zero opportunity to advance, but Delozier wasn’t phased the least bit. And sitting in his office, hearing him recount those early days, while never missing a transmission from the constant stream of radio chatter behind him and confirming reports and scheduling meetings over the phone, you believe him.

The Early Years

Serendipity seemed to be at work early in Delozier’s relationship with the park. In 1978, he was looking for a job between his junior and senior year at UT. His mom, who prepared income taxes for people, had a client who worked for the park. She mentioned it to her son, who filled out an application and returned it.

By the end of the school year, the Tennessee Valley Authority offered him a seasonal job, but he still thought of working for the park. Never the bashful one, Delozier went to park headquarters to follow up on the application. Even though he grew up only 25 miles from the park, that was the first time he ever stepped foot in the building that would become his home away from home for more than 30 years.

At the office there were 100 to 200 applications stacked on a desk. The man who interviewed him had read over Delozier’s application just before he walked through the door.

The next morning Delozier was offered the job.

Delozier admits he had no idea what to expect. The person who had worked the year before told him, “You’ll be working up on Gregory Bald. I’ll take you up, and I’ll be bringing you supplies. You’ll be coming off in August.”

Someone was pulling his leg, but only slightly. Delozier spent most of that season atop Gregory Bald doing a lot of primitive camping, but there were regular trips back to headquarters and Delozier wasn’t alone. Wild hogs, bears, and his mentor Buck Branum kept him on his toes while he learned the ropes.

After the summer job, Delozier went back to college, received his bachelor’s degree in wildlife fisheries and science and then returned to the park. He came back in 1979 as a park technician, working as a backcountry ranger and hiking 10 miles a day. In 1980 he took the wildlife handler position.

In the early 1980s, Delozier began working with bears as well as hogs. In 1984 he worked on a successful peregrine falcon re-introduction project, followed in 1986 by a successful river otter re-introduction.

By the mid 1980s, Delozier had begun taking on more and more responsibilities 

Then around 1988, his boss, Bill Cook, left the Smokies after being instrumental in working with the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service on Operation Smoky – a sting that resulted in the arrest of 84 people across four states for illegally killing black bears and selling their gall bladders on the black market.

Cook came to Delozier’s office and said, “I’ve got something to tell you. I’m involved in Operation Smoky and it’s coming out. If I stay here my life is in danger. You’ve got it all.”

Delozier said he later found out that Cook called the regional National Park Service office and told them the sting attempt would not succeed.

“If I had known that, I would have just worked harder,” Delozier said.

He got a nice upgrade when Cook left. 

“It came at a time when so many Park Service personnel were jumping ship. I didn’t tell ‘em I wasn’t leaving,” he said, assuming they knew him well enough to get the point. “This is my home,” he explained.

Work philosophy

“This job is not a job – it’s like your life,” Delozier said. “Wild animals don’t have a schedule from 8 to 4:30. Weather conditions can change in an instant. If a bear report comes in, you have to get out and see what’s going on.” 

Park spokesman Bob Miller says that Delozier’s work ethic permeates his department. 

“He works hard and that sets an example and his people work hard,” Miller said. “His departure will definitely leave a void.”

Delozier calls his job a “fix-it position.” 

“You come to work in the morning and find out what’s on your plate for that day,” he said. “It might be bears, hogs, elk – you name it. This position is caretaker and spokesperson for wildlife in the park. It weighs heavily on you. People expect you to make the right decision 100 percent of the time. But you make mistakes. You have to learn from them.”

Part of being a spokesperson for the park’s wildlife means educating visitors about how to interact with the fauna they might encounter. It’s an overwhelming task in a park that sees eight or nine million visitors annually.

“You can educate 150 people about what to expect in bear habitat and what they should do to ensure their safety and the bear’s, and as soon as they’re gone, here come 150 more,” Delozier said.

Walt West is one of scores of Delozier’s seasonal hires who went on to work for the park or other state or federal wildlife agencies. West, who left his position as a supervisory park ranger in the Smokies this year to take a position at Assateague Island National Seashore, recalled one of Delozier’s impromptu educational seminars.

“There was a young bear panhandling at a picnic area where about 70 or 80 people had gathered,” West explained. “I watched as Kim methodically positioned himself and the bear in the perfect spot for a no-miss shot before darting the bear. Once the bear was out, Kim invited anyone who wanted to, to come up and touch the bear. Then he began to give a lecture about bear problems in the park and what causes them. I dare say the majority of those people still remember Kim standing over that sleeping bear.”

West also credits Delozier for helping him understand what it means to be a caretaker of wild animals. Once while he was a ranger at Cataloochee, he requested a bear trap for a problem bruin that had been cruising the campground. West caught the bear and called Delozier. 

“I guess I was a little excited over my success,” West said. “When Kim got here he told me having to deploy a trap for a bear means we’ve failed. We failed as resource managers, and we failed as educators. I still remember that conversation.”

The bane of most field biologists is the further you go up the ladder the farther you wind up away from the field. Delozier is no exception with more and more desk time these days. But when there’s a nuisance bear or an elk on the loose, he’s still the go-to guy.

Mentor, supervisor, and innovator

Delozier’s peers, his staff, students, and researchers talk about his knowledge, his skill and abilities as a field biologist, his willingness to adapt and try new things, his willingness to seek assistance from any and all sources available, and his skills as a communicator.

“He doesn’t have to have the letters Ph.D. behind his name,” said Bill Stiver, who has worked closely with Delozier for the past 17 years. “He is known and highly respected by wildlife agencies and officials from Alaska to Florida.”

Delozier’s door is always open.

“Kim will listen to you,” Stiver said.

He may not agree, but he will listen with an open mind. And he knows that we know our job.”

Talking with Delozier, it’s easy to see the joy he gets from introducing young people to wildlife biology. 

“Young kids are hungry to learn,” he said. “When you start talking about trapping bears and wild hogs or tracking elk you can see the light in their eyes. I know how they feel – they’re thinking, ‘I can’t believe they pay you to do this.’”

Kim Stories

Almost everyone who knows Delozier has a story about him. 

“He can take the simplest event, and by the time he finishes, he’ll have you laughing out loud,” West said.

Kim’s sense of humor is widely known too. West said he bumped into Kim one day in Cataloochee, not long after barn owls had been released in Cades Cove.

“I gave it to him pretty hard,” recalled West. “I said we have barns in Cataloochee. Why do all the special projects go to Cades Cove? Kim just shrugged it off and left.”

Not long after that, the elk came to Cataloochee. On the day of the release when the fields were full of onlookers, Delozier found West in the crowd. “He just walked by, put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘There’re your barn owls, Walt.’”

Award-winning author Carolyn Jourdan works as a writer and webmaster for the Great Smoky Mountains Association. She has compiled a series of podcasts of “Kim stories.” 

“Most are about bears,” she said. “About bears waking up in his office, bears waking up in his Jeep, and skydiving bears.”

To hear these podcasts go to www.smokiesinformation.org/audio_blog/?tag=kim-delozier.

The elk in cataloochee

The experimental elk release in Cataloochee Valley is without a doubt the most ambitious, labor-intensive reintroduction project the park has seen. The research, the permitting process, the environmental studies, and administrative procedures took a decade to complete before the park could even begin to prepare for the actual acquisition, transport, and release of the first 25 elk from Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area in Western Tennessee and Western Kentucky.

Those first 25 elk were released in April 2001 as part of a five-year experiment. An additional 27 elk were brought in from Elk Island National Park in Alberta, Canada. The original plan called for another 25 elk to be released, but that was nixed when North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission became concerned over the possibility of the introduction of chronic wasting disease.

Delozier determined that bears were preying on elk calves, so he initiated the protocol of trapping bears in Cataloochee just before the elk began to calve. The bears would be trapped and taken far enough away from the valley that by the time they returned, as bears invariably do, the calves would be big enough to fend for themselves.

It appears to be working. In 2007, at least 22 bears were removed from the valley while 16 calves were born in the valley. Next year, however, will once again be a year of intense monitoring and study, as no bear will be removed.

The elk project was also rewarding to Delozier on another level. He got to work with a young, intelligent, and enthusiastic doctoral student from the University of Tennessee, Jennifer Murrow.

“She and I had a special relationship,” Delozier said, “but she could be a little over-confident. We were moving the elk in the acclimation pen one day, and Jennifer was with me at the last station. We watched as the elk came around the pen and got near us. All of a sudden, she takes off running and yelling!”

“Jennifer, shut up!” he yelled. “Just shut up! Do not say anything. We have one more chance to get these elk in here or we may suffer some fatalities. She listened and we got ‘em in the next time. I was feeling kind of bad and thought I should apologize to her. I walked over to her and she looked up and said, ‘I’m sorry.’

“Then she said, ‘You and my mama are the only two people I know who ever told me to shut up – and I listened.’”

From Murrow’s perspective, she said working with Delozier was like working with a cross between a mentor, a father figure, and an annoying older brother.

“I have the utmost respect for him,” she said. “He is extremely knowledgeable about wildlife and has incredible person-skills. The park can’t replace him.”

And the park may not replace him. “I don’t want to hang around too long and have people saying, ‘Boy I wish he’d hurry up and leave,’” he said. “I have no regrets. There are good people here. All you can do is leave your experience and leave your knowledge gained and hopefully leave the attitude that wildlife is important.”