Bob Welch died December 22, 2023 in Waupaca, Wisconsin. He was 69 years old.
On Saturday, January 6, the science teacher and migratory bird expert will be celebrated in Waupaca. That’s where Welch taught and created a 165-acre biological research station.
Recently the National Park Service officially folded Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail into its National Park System. A sliver of the 1,000-mile Ice Age Trail hugs the land Welch worked to permanently protect.
Friends and fellow birders hope to carry on Welch’s conservation legacy and annual banding next spring. It would have been his 50th season.
Original story from July 5, 2023:
There’s plenty of people committed to environmental work including activists, nonprofits and lawmakers. But countless others contribute, including Bob Welch.
For decades he has been conserving habitat in the Waupaca area, while sparking his passion for natural resources in others.
His friends will tell you, you cannot have a short conversation with Bob Welch, but everything his says you want to hear.
For example, here Welch is sharing a journey he embarked on decades ago: Welch went to great lengths to land a job in Alaska, but his plans were foiled after Ronald Reagan was elected president.
“It was like my dream job — stationed on the Aleutian Islands doing seabird counts and cliff bird counts. So I drove 3,500 miles in five and a half days, did the interview on a Friday and got hired. Came back Monday and a fax had come through from Washington. Someone was just elected and froze all federal hiring.” Welch continues, “And now I’m homeless because I have no money to get home.”
Or you might catch Welch talking his brief but spectacular stint as a seasonal Wisconsin state park naturalist.
“I said, 'Do you have money to hire me earlier.' Why? And I said, 'Why don’t we get school groups here before school is out?' It was so successful that my third year, they went from April to early October,” Welch recalls.
Both Welch’s joie de vivre and passion for nature are contagious.
An old friend, Megan Karth, recalls watching him in action in a classroom: “He had two flying squirrels in his shirt. He’s talking to the kids and all of a sudden he reaches down there; and he would sometimes do that with snakes, off season, they’re not going to move around unless they warm up so I’m warming ‘em up."
Karth remembers the students’ wonder and glee. “Kids love Mr. Welch. He’s always took them seriously,” she says.
Welch retired as a middle school science teacher five years ago, but he continues to share his knowledge and enthusiasm.
I met him when he was welcoming seasoned and fledgling birders at the Waupaca Biological Field Station — just one day in its annual migratory bird banding program.
Welch coached Nadia Holstein, a fourth grader, as she released her first bird — a brown thrasher.
“Are you ready? He likes to jump! Ready, set, here we go,” Welch said.
Nadia and her dad traveled more than two hours from Port Washington to be there. Nadia tagged along helping Welch throughout the day.
Welch not only leads the bird banding, he’s the founder of the Waupaca Biological Field station.
In 1985, Welch established the nonprofit as part of his commitment to the wishes of the land’s previous owner Charlotte Sawyer. She wanted the 165 acres to be put to good use.
“She said, ‘The dream is here, Bob, is that I want you to save the land from development.' I said, 'Let’s establish this as the Waupaca Biological Field Station.' … A place where research can be done on because we found six relic prairies across the property that had never been plowed and the savanna had been grazed here, but never plowed, so I said, 'We’ve got a lot of nice plants here, nice community here,'” Welch says.
Today the field station is a poster child of research and restoration — including sand prairie, oak savannah and a mighty fine swamp system.
Early on, Welch began surveying birds and other species.
“In 1991, two people knocking at the door came to the door, the DNR acquisitions officer and a endangered species biologist, and they said are you aware there’s a little blue butterfly here. I said, 'Oh, we have three species, we have the spring azure, we have the eastern tailed-blue and then we have this other one I can’t find in the book,'” Welch says.
It turned out to be the Karner blue butterfly, which at the time was on the verge of being added to the federal endangered species list.
“I said, ‘Really?! We have thousands here.’ They said, 'That’s why we’re here. Would you be interested in doing conservation for that?' And, Charlotte and I were the first private landowners in the nation to sign a 25-year contracts for the Karner blue butterfly," he shares.
That’s meant Welch has been able to restore more of his acres to native plants — especially wild lupine. Karners count exclusively on lupine during their larval stage.
“So we went from two acres to six acres, and now it’s a little over 70 acres of [restored] sand prairie,” Welch says.
Over the years dozens of students have worked alongside Welch, including Waupaca High School sophomore Grace Hanson. She’s interning at the field station for a second year.
“Yeah, every weekend [this summer], we’ll be bird banding and we do Karner blue butterflies and mussels,” Hanson explains.
Hanson says she savors the opportunity to learn from Welch, even when that means starting her workday at 5:30 a.m.
“He’s a very nice person and he’s also super interesting. He’ll have a million stories to tell you, he’s really smart." Hanson adds, “And a great role model.”
Luke Trittelwitz agrees. He heard about Welch’s work while working toward a wildlife degree at UW-Stevens Point.
“Got Bob’s number and every Saturday here I am — all throughout the spring and parts of the summer. And then in the fall, we’d do some northern saw-whet owl banding and every once and awhile we’d get a barred owl in those nets as well — so, tons of fun,” Trittelwitz says.
Trittelwitz had just graduated and was about to start an avian field technician job at a nature reserve 130 miles west of Waupaca. He hopes one day to teach students field ecology "just like Bob has done."
“He’s a teacher through and through. So, learning all those different aspects of wildlife has been tremendous. All over the field to in the classroom to the lab setting, Bob definitely knows it,” Trittelwitz says.
There’s so much more to Bob Welch’s life’s work beyond mentoring students of all ages, his creation and management of the Waupaca Biological Field station and his career as a middle school science teacher.
In the 1970s, Welch helped monitor prairie chickens. In the '80s, he jumped into gray wolf research.
Welch has hosted and housed students and professors carrying out research at his field station.
And he runs an environmental consulting business. Welch says he does that on the side to help keep the field station afloat.
So what keeps him going?
Remember Nadia, the fourth grader from Port Washington?
Welch says passing along with what he knows fuels his passion. “I love my job. You know why? Because this child will never forget this,” Welch says.
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