U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s first wildlife biologist honored with posthumous plaque

Faulkner
SHEPHERDSTOWN — On Sept. 6, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s first wildlife biologist, Ki Faulkner, was posthumously honored at the National Conservation Training Center (NCTC), with the presentation of a plaque with a picture of him holding a porcupine to his son, Scot.
“How many times do you see a guy holding a porcupine?” said Steve Chase, director at the NCTC as he presented the plaque. “In our program for conservation history, we focus on people who made a difference in conservation. Ki Faulkner gave boxes of things from his collection to us here. He was a very good friend of NCTC. It’s about time we honor Ki and have him up on the wall here, where people can learn about his legacy.”
With the mounting of Faulkner’s plaque to the wall of the NCTC, Chase said this “conservation hero” will join about 100 others, who already have their own plaques mounted on the wall.
While Faulkner would no doubt have appreciated the plaque being given in his honor, Scot noted the award he was most proud of receiving during his lifetime was his Soldiers Medal.
“He left after his freshman year at the University of Maine, Orono to volunteer for the Tenth Mountain Division. He quickly rose to acting platoon sergeant of 3rd Platoon in the 86th Regiment,” Scot said. “The Tenth Mountain Division was specially trained for mountain warfare and led the Allies’ final push in northern Italy during World War II.
“My Dad was known for his leadership skills and his acts of bravery,” Scot said. “He earned two Bronze Stars, for rallying his men in turning back a German counter-attack on Riva Ridge and for leading the capture of the German Headquarters in Torbole during the battle for Lake Garda.
“Yet, he was most proud of his Soldiers Medal. On Feb. 10, 1945, his platoon was staying in a warehouse, readying for a patrol. A pin popped out of a grenade during distribution of ammunition. As others froze, he rushed forward, grabbed the grenade and threw it through a ceiling skylight to explode in the air,” Scot said. “He saved the lives of 18 of his comrades.”
Faulkner went on to return to the University of Maine and complete his bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology, before being recalled by the U.S. Army to duty in the Korean War. While there, he designed and led field exercises for the 101st Airborne on Okinawa.
After returning home from the war, Faulkner was hired by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), where he began what would turn out to be a 36-year career. He went on to become the youngest regional supervisor in the USFWS, took over the organization’s wildlife services division in the Midwest in 1964 and then served as the last Bureau Chief for Animal Damage Control in Washington, D.C. His teams first implemented the Endangered Species Act; invented the first radio collars used for tracking wolves; made ground-breaking recommendations to prevent bird strikes at airports; and rediscovered the Black Footed Ferret, which had been believed to have gone extinct in the 1920s. The discovery and the subsequent work Faulkner did to protect the Black Footed Ferret led to the Smithsonian Conservation Biological Institute naming one of their breeding males “Ki Ferret” in 2015.
Faulkner went on to receive the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services’ first annual Heritage Award in 2016, for the work he did on behalf of protecting the environment and the animals that live within it, along with donating his collection to the NCTC museum.
“His files, his study collections – which includes skulls and pelts – his decoys, his hand tied flies – that are works of art unto themselves – and then, ultimately photos, (were donated) because he loves taking photos. So he took tons of photos of some of the research projects,” Scot said. “No one else had ever taken those pictures, so these are the only ones that exist and they’re all now here in the museum.”