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Dennis and his wife Sheila in Oregon in 2007
Dennis has been actively involved in a wide range of successful environmental and wildlife programs in Western NY. He initiated the Rochester Peregrine Falcon Program, River Otter program, and is currently working on the Seneca Army Depot White Deer Project. His story shows the power of an individual to create infectious positive change in a region, simply by following his heart and being comfortable taking a winding road towards success. This is a story of persistence and a constant mind towards improving the region. – Bigger Impact Weekly Team
Beginnings!
I grew up in Rome NY. My back yard fronted on a bunch of open space and forest, and a creek with lots of Native American history. I spent all of my time when I was not going to school outside, hunting, trapping and digging for frogs. I graduated from Utica College in 1969 and moved out here, taking a job as a middle school science and math teacher at Clifton Springs. I began to also work for the atomic energy corporation, going around to schools and giving lectures on nuclear energy and radiation biology. I went down to Oakridge, Tennessee, learning about the atom, and came back up to do shows for schools for three years. I was the atom man for New York State and spoke to about 400 schools and 300,000 students.
Rochester Gas and Electric happened to see me in front of students, and hired me the next day. I became a member of the brand new Environmental Department in 1972. I stayed there for about twenty nine years doing the whole gamut of environmental programs. I got to deal with everyone! I had a really good job. I had the freedom to be flexible and meet with all sorts organizations.
Right after I joined, RG&E decided to form a subsidiary for the first time ever in the late 1980's. I went with the subsidiary called Utilicom. They had two products; asbestos training and environmental auditing. I became involved in the training for both programs and stayed there for about two years, got to travel the country and met a lot of people. I was now dealing with adults instead of school kids. After that, I wanted to get back to RG&E.
ROCHESTER PEREGRINE FALCONS
RG&E were starting a program called environmental stewardships. No one knew how to grasp it. I wanted to do something different. We just had to come up with a good idea. One night, I was down in Manhattan and I saw a peregrine falcon fly by chasing a pigeon. I thought, “Why can’t we do that in Rochester?” I did some homework and found that utilities out west were putting nest boxes up in smoke stacks for peregrine falcons. They all had a common denominator by the name of Bob Anderson. I contacted him and went out and visited. We spent time checking out smoke stacks and being attacked by falcons.
I came back to RGE and was hooked. It was time for this conservative state utility (RG&E) to take a stand. It would be a great thing for the stewardship program to go forward with. At first they were against the cost of the idea --they laughed at me. I was dismayed, but not down, because I knew I was right. Other utilities had shown that there was no downside to bringing in peregrine falcons, an endangered species. This was good for the public and showed that the utility cared. I decided to approach thirty businesses in Rochester asking if they wanted to participate in bringing falcons to Rochester. In less than a month I had sixteen thousand dollars committed by people who knew diddily squat about Peregrine Falcons. Companies in Rochester like Chase Manhattan, Nixon Peabody, Bausch and Lomb, Kodak and several smaller firms like Davey Tree Company and Day Engineering. A total of twelve organizations came in to donate time of people, equipment, and money. I went to RG&E and said, “Either you do it with me, or I do it alone.” RG&E agreed to move forward
This was the first time our company had been so proactive. Usually a company waits for a violation and then reacts. We looked at all of the resources we were using and decided to finally give back to the community and the environment. At that time the peregrine falcon was still an endangered species. I bought ten baby falcons and recruited a group of four or five people to help. The Falcons ended up shipping in on US Airways, which is very ironic that the fastest bird in the world came by airplane. But, I fondly recall picking them up in 1994 and being greeted by a “cack cack cack cack” noise.
We put half of the birds in a box, called a hack box, that the general maintenance crew of RG&E had built downtown at RG&E headquarters. The other birds went up to Russell Station in Greece. We had videotape on them twenty four hours a day. I had a monitor in my office, with all of the wires snaked through my office. All of a sudden, I became the most popular guy in the company.
And, at that time we were going through the first layoff in RG&E history. The falcon venture was positive and uplifting to people. It created some hope. You know how when you get into an elevator and people don’t say a thing? People began to get into an elevator and do bird calls. People had been pent up for so long! Everyone was extremely ecstatic. We put a large TV monitor on East Avenue so that people could see the falcons. That went extremely well.
We ended up having a huge press event… and all of the falcons showed up. So here we were; a utility and business people repopulating the state with an endangered species. All of a sudden there was a mindset change. RG&E began to think that it could show the community, its customers, its employees and the state regulators that we really were a good company, proactive on the environment. That was kind of the start of it all. And, when the Falcons were 42 days old, we were able to do the first release into the wild.
We ended up having one male named Zeus go to Omaha, Nebraska and mate with a bird from Canada. Their brood became the only one in the state of Nebraska. Then we had one go to Hartford, Connecticut. That was the first pair in Connecticut in fifty years. All kinds of similar stories evolved.
Falcon Cam: http://rfalconcam.com/rfc-main/mainView.php
HISTORIC TREES & VETERANS MEMORIAL
We started to branch into other programs, like the famous and historical tree program. We purchased trees with historical lineage and planted them with kids. We worked with kids from New York City who had never seen trees or worms before. They would dig and find a worm and say, “What is that?” The famous Historic Tree Program became very valuable.
We also got involved in the development of the Vietnam Veteran Memorial in Highland Park. I had RG&E commit to one tree for every GI that was killed in Vietnam in this five county area. We also had a special grove of trees for all of the Congressional Medal of Honor winners.
RIVER OTTERS
BI: How many other companies in the community copy this model?
No one! When I left in 2003, the Environmental Stewardship Program unfortunately ended. There were many programs going, but for some reason no one else took the lead on it.
As an example, in 1993 the DEC said that they wanted to bring Otters back to Western NY. We went to public hearings, and met with people, but they said they did not want us to use public state money for the project. We decided to form a private coalition to manage the River Otter project. My last name is Money, so they elected me president, and we formed a non-profit organization called NY River Otter Project (ROP). We released the River Otters a full year ahead of schedule into Montezuma Wildlife Refuge. We had the freedom from bureaucracy and were able to get things rocking and rolling a lot faster than the state agency would be able to do.
This one school in Port Byron “adopted me” and became involved in the project. They raised money and came to the releases, it was great! We had about one hundred and twenty adults involved and a lot of kids. We went all over the state and I gave tons and tons of speeches and did all of the marketing with my cohorts. We had a great relationship with the College of Medicine at Cornell. Over time, in six years we surpassed our goal and released 279 otters. We also helped people in Holland, Quebec, Ontario, and Spain with their otter projects. We had interviews done by the South Korean Broadcast Organization for an hour long documentary educating its people on conservation. I asked, “Why did you pick us?” They said, “You have the most famous otter project in the world.” I said, “I did not know that!”
NEST BOXES
We also did some smaller projects with Boy Scouts and nest boxes. I found boys who were working on their Eagle badge and so they were looking for project ideas. We would enlist the aid of students from BOCES, who would build the boxes. RG&E would pay for the materials and the Boy Scouts would put up the nest boxes. They would all get a little press about their efforts. We created a nest box trail for kestrels and also put up one hundred and seventy five nest boxes on transmission poles for RG&E.
The last thing I got involved in was helping to restore Sturgeon back in the Genesee River. We worked with the USGS, the US Fish and the NYSDEC to look at the capability of the Genesee River as nesting habitat for the sturgeon. Eventually we got eight hundred Sturgeons from Oneida Lake where they have a sturgeon hatchery. Now we have to wait 25 years until they repopulate Ontario Lake. This was wonderful because there were so many people involved. I got to know all sorts of people. In this kind of project you either sink or swim. It made me more professional. When people said, “You can’t do it.” I said, “Why not?! If it is a positive program, we can make it happen. How about we break it apart and remove that negativity and move it into something positive.”
NEW BEGINNINGS
RG&E was purchased by Energy East in 2003. They gave me a buyout package and I took it. I was fifty five then and wanted to do something else. I talked to some of my friends who mentioned a job over at the Genesee Waterway Center; a rowing and kayaking business. They were looking for an Executive Director and I got that job. Then, I had to learn a lot! It was a not-for-profit that was going under. I had to clean a lot of skeletons out of the closet. We went from a nobody to an organization that people began to recognize. We got a lot of minorities involved in water sports and started the first minority rowing team in New York State. I was extremely proud of that, as well as my partner at RG&E, Lydia Boddie-Rice. We had a bunch of kids from the inner city take kayaking lessons at Lock 32 of the Erie Canal. It was a great program, but after four years of that, I had enough and needed more challenges.
A week after I left, I found I had prostate cancer. I took care of that and am now cancer free.
SENECA WHITE DEER (http://senecawhitedeer.org/ )
Now, I am focused on the White Deer Project, which I have been working on for ten years. I also just started a new company.
BI: You are a high energy person.
I don’t sleep much.
I used to represent this region of New York State and Albany on a board called The Conservation Fund Advisory Board. It was a state level board. It was meant to oversee how the money that was generated from hunting and fishing and trapping licenses was spent by the DEC on fish and wildlife programs. I did that for six or seven years. Seneca County was in my region.
I found out that they were shutting down the Seneca Army Depot, and a group of six of us pitched in one hundred bucks each and formed Seneca White Deer, whose mission was to protect the depot, its open space, resources and the White Deer, so that future generations could enjoy it. It was built with public money and maintained with public money, so we felt that it should be kept for the public. Over the last ten years, plenty of organizations have come and gone from the depot, but we have stayed the whole time. In April of this year we are starting more tours to showcase to the leaders of the community that tourism will generate money for Seneca County, providing jobs, tax revenue and a public image as the world headquarters for White Deer. There are nine of us on the board now, and we have been doing a lot of work.
My focus is to get the depot protected. I will be making a statement to support the open space acquisition of seven thousand acres of the depot. After ten years we have to succeed. It is extremely frustrating sometimes, but tourism is the second largest business in New York State. All of our tours will be by bus.
In October 2006 we had CBS come out. We are trying to get all of the media out in order to stimulate sales this year. We had 1,800 people in two weekends come out last year. I had to turn five hundred people away. We grossed $28,000 in two weekends.
There are one hundred and seventy five white deer. Unfortunately the deer population is going down, so something has to be done immediately. However, as long as the army is in there cleaning up, we do not have that ability yet. There is also talk of developing a natural history museum in the Finger Lakes, similar to the wild center up in Tupper Lake.
White Deer Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrB0ADdRLEI
COTTON TOP CREW (ENVIRO – PRO’s)
We started a new business about a year and a half ago. Looking at my friends, all of these gray heads, I thought, “We are all gray heads, but we have a lot that we can still do. Why not form a unique type of company with them all?” I presented the idea to them and we formed a company, Enviro-Pros Group. Our mission is to do project management, including permitting, training, environmental branding, public relations, and marketing. If your company wanted to improve its face in the community, we could do that. We have staff who could brand you as a green company, or a proactive company. This gives me flexibility to keep working on the depot stuff and go into the woods and chop down trees for firewood if I want to. You have to keep busy. You have to keep productive, whether it is for the environment or society.
I truly believe that if people do not stay productive they will lose their mind. You need to leave behind a legacy, whether helping people or improving the environment. We are running out of open space and we are having more and more problems with the environment and wildlife. The wildlife was here before us, and I think they have a right to stay here for future generations. They bring so much to our lives. Can you imagine a world without birds? I looked out the window the other day to saw twelve deer eating from my apple trees. It was a wonderful site. I am a hunter, but also a conservationist. You have to appreciate and respect what is out there.
PROMOTIONAL MASTERY
When we did the otter project, we were looking for creative ways to promote the project. I was eating Perry’s Ice Cream one day (I love ice cream) and came across a Moose on the package. I asked why we could not do this for the Otter project. I sent an email to then president of Perry’s, Geoff Yancy. He wrote back and we met up in Letchworth State Park to view a release of six otters on a beautiful day. There were four hundred people there, everyone was cheering. As the press was converging all around me I saw Geoff in the background; “I’ll be in touch.”
Six months later we had Welcome-Back-Otter-Ice-Cream. Thirty thousand gallons sold out in four weeks. It was a great promotion and fund generating activity. It is just a matter of thinking outside of the box, bringing in other organizations and making them a winner as well.
This type of thing saved RG&E millions of dollars in environmental fines because of air pollution. RG&E could have been fined up to thirty million dollars for opacity problems. Because of the relationships through the Falcon and Otter project, it did not happen. I knew everyone by name in the agencies. They ended up taking that fine and turning it into a $500,000 cash fine, and mandated that we develop the missing parts of the Genesee Valley Greenway. That is what happens when you develop those kinds of relationships. RG&E developed a boat launch at Little Black Creek and The Greenway. All these things come together, often with a lot of politics involved.
MESSAGE TO WESTERN NY
Success for me is waking up in the morning knowing I have done something important for the environment, leaving behind a legacy for my family and future generations to enjoy. I hope we can instill in them a desire to become an environmental steward.
New York State Outdoor Writers Association awarding Dennis the Annual Paul Kessler Award for Conservation. Photo taken in Old Forge, NY
BI: If you could send any message to Western NY, what would it be?
Don’t get caught in a rut, think outside of the box. Get outside your comfort zone. Think about your abilities and skills sets. Think about what you could do. Just because you think you need to go down a certain route, does not mean you can't be creative. Take the blinders off and pursue your dreams. You may go through some hard times, but you can always work two jobs to pay the bills. Don’t let anything stop you if you know what you want to do.
In my late 40s I decided I wanted to run a marathon. I did not even know how far it was. I ran 3:27 the first marathon and was pretty happy. I thought I only needed 3:30 to make the Boston Marathon, and I slowed up… so I missed out on boston as I needed 3:25. Pay attention to details, I found out too late.Dennis can be reached by email at WhiteBuck47@yahoo.com!
