Radiolab - Weighing Good Intentions

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

In an episode first released in 2010, then-producer Lulu Miller drives to Michigan to track down the endangered Kirtland’s warbler. Efforts to protect the bird have lead to the killing of cowbirds (a species that commandeers warbler nests), and a prescribed burn aimed at creating a new habitat. Tragically, this burn led to the death of a 29-year-old wildlife technician who was dedicated to warbler restoration. Forest Service employee Rita Halbeisen, local Michiganders skeptical of the resources put toward protecting the warbler, and the family of James Swiderski (the man killed in the fire), weigh in on how far we should go to protect one species.EPISODE CREDITS:Reported by - Lulu MillerSignup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

This is Radio Lab. I'm Lulu Miller. 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 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. 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, Boomerad, for a story we called Weighing Good Intentions. Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab.

Radio Lab. From W-N-Y-C. Rewind. Okay, so set up this story. This story happens where? 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...

It's about an 800-mile drive. And it's just gorgeous out here. Dude, listen to you. Lush and... All into the outdoors. It's like nausea. Yeah, I know. But I'm just one of those...

When I get out into nature, I feel my place in the world. Anyway, just crossed into Mayo. So you get there. What was the reason you were going again? To see a bird. 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?

Bers wait there life to see it. Really? Yeah. Only found right here. What's the bird called? Have you seen a girl at least before? No, I've never seen one. This is my first trip up here.

This right here, where are you? 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. I'm from South Carolina. We're from Oregon, South Dakota.

Dayton, Ohio area. Wyoming. We'll walk out to a spot, try to stay single file. The park ranger leads us down a path into a little clearing. little clearing and pretty immediately in the background there way back there mm-hmm a guy from Ohio spots of Curtlins oh there is yeah a tiny yellow bird back there right there up high and a jack pine tree oh yeah oh great it's singing like crazy a lady from Dayton starts clapping can you describe what you're

seeing I see a lovely bird with a grayback this is a guy from Oregon Jim Coleman blue-gray back. And his wife, Rita. Smaller than a robin. Beautiful yellow throat and breast. Brilliant yellow. And so in the sunlight, it's just an absolutely radiant bird. Yeah. Is this worth the trip to

Morgan? Oh, you bad? I don't know. It just makes me thankful that I'm here. And it makes me grateful that my wife is here. I know this is something she's wanted to see for a long time. Jim actually starts to tear up.

This is a very special bird. Oh my hand. And that's what this story is really about. How special is this bird? Meaning... Well, how much is a species worth? Um, I know... Well, here's the backstory.

Okay. In the early 70s, the warbler almost went extinct. Want to go in? Okay. The reason why it was thought... That's just the sound of them. It was because of a little creature called the cowbird. It's not doing anything good.

It's just a parasite. You know, on some. And who is this guy? This is Chris Mensing. Fish and Wildlife Biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And we're standing in this cage full of cowbirds. It looks like we've got six males and one female. Let me grab a couple.

He just reached out and grabbed two of them. You're good at that. And the males... Yeah, go ahead. What do they look like? It's like, imagine a tiny little. little gnarly crow. They've got really sharp little beaks.

But with this curled beak. It has a very draught body, very dull. So here's what the cowbert does to the warbler. While the warbler is out of its nest... Like getting a worm or something? Yeah, the cowbird lays one of its own eggs in the nest. To make room for it so the warbler doesn't know anything is up, it pushes out one of the warbler's eggs.

Oh. Get out of the nest? Mm-hmm. And the timing is such that the cowbert egg will hatch first. and will double its size in 24 hours. Wow. So by the time that the host birds hatch, that cowburger may be up to four times the size.

And when they start begging from food to the parents, the loudest, the most aggressive chick is going to get fed. The cowbird chick. So the warbler mom ends up shoveling food into this cowbird chick? Yep. And oftentimes it gets so much food that another warbler chick will die. Really? Yeah.

So when the cowbirds first showed up in this area. In late 1800s, early 1900s. The warbler population just started plummeting. This huge drop. By 1971... There are only 200 males. On Earth. Wow.

So, what do you do? Are you asking me? Mm-hmm. 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 just bite me. They, uh, just like anyone, if she had someone larger grabbing you, They don't appreciate it too much. And you want to 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. Just with your hands? There's no. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Do you have to do that? Yeah.

Like all the time? Yeah. Did you see this? No. But 1972, Fish and Wildlife Service sets up a bunch of traps. A few years and about 12,000 dead cowbirds later. It works. Kind of.

The population stopped dying off, but then it didn't start bouncing back. What's going on? Yeah. Why aren't we seeing bigger numbers now that we're catching the cowbirds? That's Rita Halbison. She worked with the Forest Service back in the 80s. And we thought, well, we finally concluded it must be just there is not enough habitat. Like they don't have enough trees?

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. That was weird. I could feel it as I was saying. They like them young. No, but they like young trees, is what you're saying. Yep. And there aren't young trees in this place?

No, it's really weird. When they started looking around this forest, they noticed all the trees were really, really old. Why? Why wouldn't there be young trees? Well, us. Only you can prevent forest fire. And it's chill. Hey, hey, smoky bear. 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. Only you can prevent forest fires. But fire is exactly what's needed up there to make new trees. Yeah, this ecosystem is a fire ecosystem. Says Chris? It burns. Because when these trees burn, they release their seeds.

and make room for new trees to grow. It is a fire ecosystem. It is made to burn. So, I ask you again, what do you do? Do you start fires? Would that be the solution? That would be the solution. So the forestry started doing... What we call a prescribed burn. Basically, says Rita, they burned down a little patch of forest.

A few acres. To regenerate it. And one windy spring day in 1980 at a place called Mack Lake, the Forestry Service started a fire that they probably shouldn't have. Okay, my name is Dick Lord, and I, at the time of the Mack Lake Fire, I was part of the ignition crew for the prescribed burn. What is an ignition crew?

They light the fire. So at 10 in the morning, Dick and his crew go out into the woods. He went out with a plan. Start setting up perimeters, and they begin lighting a few stands of shrubs. I was driving home. That's Bob Burner, best name ever for a firefighter. I could see Forest Service starting to do a burn. And I thought, this is not a good time.

It was windy. They didn't have the manpower. And I said, we'll probably be getting called out here shortly. Basically, we did not realize that the weather was going to change as rapidly as it did. The wind came up suddenly, something nobody could predict, and it took the fire across the road into a stand of mature jack pine and took off. There are flames probably 100 to 150 feet in the air.

The sound is like a roaring train. The forest guys jump into their bulldozers, trying to plow trenches alongside the fire. To pinch it off. And I mean, it could feel the heat. It was way out of our control. Hitting the tops of the trees, rolling. I knew at the rate it was traveling that, you know, it's going to be a...

You know, it's going to be a major catastrophe. Within six hours, it had burned over 20,000 acres. It's one of the fastest moving fires ever documented. Yeah, I went through here. The fires you can see was all black. These are two guys. Hi, Bob. I'm like.

Bown houses in the area that got burnt. Remember the guy down there in the corner, the garage was all burned up, black charred. Their houses were okay, but 41 houses were destroyed. All the way up to the lake. Just completely. Yeah. Was it nothing green, like something out of a moonscape.

As far as you could see, everything gone. And the worst part about it for all of us. Let's Rita Halbison again. Was that it killed one of the Forest Service employees, a very young wildlife technician who was very well loved by his co-workers. A guy named Jim Swiderski. You know, Jim was a good friend as well as an employee. Dick Lard again, Jim's boss.

He told me that Jim had been a post-oids. man for a few years, but just loved birds so much that he took a huge pay cut to come and help protect the warbler. Basically, what happened was the fire overran him. Oh, the press was having a heyday, just tearing into the Forest Service for what had happened. The townspeople were very angry at the Forest Service. How could you do this? Rita says they were told not to wear their forest service uniforms in town. Gosh, it was so Terrible. And the forest itself, you know, there was nothing there.

It was completely silent. But a year later, a little bit of green started to poke up. Then the next year a little bit more. Eight to ten years after that Mack like burn, it just seemed like everywhere you turned around, you'd stop for listen. There were five or six birds, the tremendous number of warblers. That was the answer to the mystery. The fire.

You know, if you look at a population graph... That's Chris Mensing again. After that Mack Lake Burn, the population went like that. He points his hands straight up. So it's pretty dramatic. And today, the numbers are up to almost 4,000 birds. Ah, there is, yeah. And growing.

Singing like crazy. Now that the birds are back, but a man is gone, When you walk around this town, a question lingers in the air. Is the life of a fireman worth the life of a bird? That question, right after the break. Lulu Radio Lab, just before the break, a well-intentioned fire had turned deadly, and it left a town wondering.

A lifeful fireman worth the life of a bird. Oh, take a look. Take a look. Is it? That's incredible. Got him. I got him. I got him.

No. In my opinion, it isn't. This is Ed Fawcett. I wouldn't trade your life for a bird. I'm sitting with him and his wife, Mary Jane. Amen. In a diner. And no matter where you go in this town,

what's the government doing? People don't tend to be huge fans of. the warblers. It's just a small bird. And I've been up here since 68. I've never seen one. Did you ever see one? No. Never have I seen one? No. And back to Ed. I just got to say to you, what would you think about it if your father or brother were killed in a useless fire for a bird? It'd be pretty hard to accept, wouldn't it? But if you zoom out, one human life versus the end of a species? Do you know how many warblers there are in the United States? I think there's something like 37 species of warblers.

The real number is actually closer to 60. That's kind of ridiculous. And that's not all. They ask you, when are you done? And we really say never. 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. If we let things be, the bird would be extinct. That's the hard thing about this job is. knowing that we're never done. How many people are working? 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.

And all of us began to really sink in on one of my last mornings out there. All right, it is five in the morning. It was the annual Kirtland Warbler census. Where birders from all over the world show up to help count how many. any warblers there are out there. Is it like, there's a warblower?

Step, step, step, step. There's a warblah. Yeah, that's actually exactly how it works. I was paired up with this guy, Dave Mendez. We're going to kind of walk through the middle of these transects. We're going to come up. He's kind of a dude, dude. He's an older guy, got a beard.

I worked for an electrical contractor. Told me he's got a man room. Man man room. You know, most guys have got sports, but I've got Kurtland's Warbler pictures up on the wall. Nice. So I went into it thinking, like, this will be really cool. We'll march along. we'll count. 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, an hour tops. And? Hey, Dave. Oh, there you go. We set off, dense brambly forest. It's still dark. That was a hermit thrush. And let me just play you a quick little time lapse. 20 to 7 right now. The sun's just coming up, and it's getting a little muggy out here. That was the current ones.

Oh yeah? Yeah. We can't count him though. He's not in our section. 707. He heard one way back that way. Yeah? Yeah.

There he is. But I'm not going to mark him in because I don't know exactly where he's at. 733. There he goes. Yep. Right there. So do you count him now? No, no.

No. We want to be a lot more accurate than just to say we know there's one up there. We want to triangulate them. triangulate them. 9.56 and all's well in the warbler woods. Ewe. A couple of ants are biting me. Yeah. They hurt, don't they? They do a little bit. Yeah.

Get out of there. 10.45 a.m. I know that there's a bird out there. I can still hear that bird. Way back there. So we end up staying out there for seven and a half hours. I just marked one, right? Yep, I've only marked one. And I don't mean to sound like I'm making fun. 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... He's going to be right off over here. I just started thinking about all the effort it takes. There's two rows of trees over from us, and we can't see them. I just suddenly thought,

it's this fussy, fragile little bird, and it hasn't evolved. Who cares? I mean, this is not worth it. And so I started, asking people who protect the bird. Why do that? It's so much money, and it's all for a bird.

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? Well, we do it because we should. You know, we're stewards of the land. That's Chris Mensing again, cowbird killer. It's for future generations. And here's the fire starter, Dick Lord. You know, the Kirtland's warbler was listed under the 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, you know, we had to do what the law required us to do. So we should do it, and the law tells us we have to do it. Unconvincing. And that question... The life of a fireman worth the life of a bird. And that guy, Ed, at the diner, it just stuck in my mind. And I realized I couldn't leave this town until I talked to the people who lost the most.

Did I just get you to introduce yourself? Hold name? Yeah, sure. Robert Swiderski, age 54. Kathleen Swidersky. Fort Swidersky. The mother. And the mother of James Swidersky.

The guy who died? Yeah. Okay. What, iced tea or water or anything? We're all sitting around the kitchen table. There's a lot of hot dogs and beer over there. Jim's brother-in-law is there, too. So I have Calvin.

Kevin Debris. And I asked them. to tell me about Jim. Quite a guy. Soft-spoken. Smart. It's quite a character. Yup.

They told me at first, they were furious. They should have never, ever sent him in there. Angry at the Forest Service, angry about this bird. Very angry. Now, three decades later, I say you keep that little bird going. Exactly. Really?

Then Jim's younger brother, Robert, said that the thing he wanted the most is for the Kurtland's Warbler to become the state bird. But that would be the ultimate. That would be the biggest accomplishment ever would be that being a state bird. Wow. I guess in some ways I'm surprised. I 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,

that I would just hate that bird. No, it's not the bird. I mean, that bird didn't do anything to any of us. You know, if we can keep it going, I mean, that's what he set out to do. Let's keep it going. If I think about Jim's death, any of the military guys, like the death of a soldier.

Where would you be setting right now? We haven't lost all those soldiers in World War I, World War II. That he died protecting us. You know, it's only one species. Well, then it's going to be another species, and another species, and another species. Next thing you know, you walk out in the morning, and it'll be quiet. Thank God for Teddy Roosevelt and the boys that made our national parks. Imagine what if we didn't have those?

It costs money, it's painful, blah, blah, blah. You've got to have the guts to do that. And Jim was really that kind of gut. Wow, that is convincing. Yeah. But... I mean, do you agree for us? And I ask the mom.

What can I say? The birds are coming back, but the life is gone. So why bring it up again? It's done. You can't bring it back, so you have to live with it, but there's always a hole in your heart. Something that none of us will ever forget forever. Don't ask me any more questions, please. And then, if ever there was a sign to just turn off the darn mic.

Darn Mike. Oh! The power goes out. She's all beat. Give me a break. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Go home and get the generator. I think we're done. Oh, boy. Pretty dark. Okay, Lulu from 2025 here again. 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. Fish and Wildlife Service officially removed the Kirtland's Warbler from the endangered species list. That meant the bird had surpassed recovery goals.

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. And one more thing. A few years back, I called up Robert Swiderski just to check in and ask how everyone was doing, and he said that his mom, Florence, I remember this, he said, she ain't cooking, but she's still kicking. 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. Hi, I'm Victor from Springfield, Missouri, and here are the staff credits. Radio Lab was created by Jad, Habenrod, and edited by Soan Reeler. Lou Miller and Lassenassar are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director. sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sanyu, Nan San Bernard, Matt Kielan, Annie McEwan, Alex Nissen, Sarah Sandbeck, Anissa Rizza, Ariane Wack, Pal Alters, Molly Webster, and Jessica

Young, with help from Rebecca Rand. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Pujo Menzini, and Natalie Nadell. Middleton. Hi, I'm Jerry, and I'm calling from Kapsawar, Kenya. Leadership support for Radio Lab science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.