Talk NERRdy to Me: Rachael Phillos

Talk NERRdy to Me is a monthly column about leaders and luminaries from across our 30 Reserves. This month, NERRA’s garrulous gabber Nik Charov interviewed Rachael Phillos, manager at the Delaware Reserve. They spoke of parks and tarps and the state of Delaware.

Nik: Rachael … Feelos? Phyll-OS?

Rachael: FILL-ohs!

Nik: Completely wrong from the beginning. <sigh> Let’s start again.

Rachael: Sure. 

Nik: According to ChatGPT, you have over 60 published papers, you’ve got a new superhero film coming out this summer—congratulations!—and your family invented the flaky pastry we all love.

Rachael: Nope.

Nik: But you are the manager of the Delaware National Estuarine Research Reserve?

Rachael: They keep telling me this.

Nik: … was it a surprise to you?

Rachael: Did I wake up one day and have a new hat put on my head? Yes, that’s exactly how it happened. Our state partner is the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, who I’ve worked with since 2006. The job was posted, I looked at it, and I said, “I don’t know what this place is. I’ve lived in Delaware my entire life.” We actually had some visitors today who were like, “We’ve lived here for 22 years, and we didn’t know this place was here.” Delaware’s not that big, but somehow Delawareans still don’t know the Reserve is here. I applied, and six years later here I am.

Nik: I confess, I had to look on a map to see where and what Delaware is.

Rachael: … and you only saw that top bit, where [Interstate] 95 cuts through. The rest is hidden; nobody else knows we’re here.

Nik: Google Maps tells me much of Delaware is green, flat, and possibly golf course?

Rachael: There’s definitely golf course— and beach. And tax-free shopping!

Nik: So much to learn about a place I’ve never cared about. 

Rachael: I’ll win you around.

Nik: Unlikely. Literally there’s not one famous person from Delaware. I know you’ve spent your entire life in Delaware, so you must like it. Before the Reserve, you were with Delaware State Parks?

Rachael: I’ve been a superintendent at two different state parks, and before that an educator. It’s the same world as the education coordinator in Reserves.

Nik: Do people also not know these state parks exist?

Rachael: People love the state parks. I think it’s because you have to pay to get into them. At the Reserve, we like to have everybody come out to our facilities and participate in our programs and we do it all for free. Maybe that’s our downfall? 

Nik: You’re getting … dozens of visitors per year?

Rachael: We do a little bit better than that, but we are off the beaten track. Our driveway itself is a mile-long gravel stretch. We actually have signs along the way that are like, “You’re almost there, we promise!” and “So close!” This is the St. Jones component, because don’t forget, we have two. The Blackbird Creek Reserve component is very heavily used, but our visitor center and offices are at St. Jones.

Nik: For those of us who will never visit Delaware, both components are in the middle of the state? One has to assume they’re on the Delaware Coast. 

Rachael: All of Delaware is coastal! We’re long, but we’re narrow. Our St. Jones component is right smack dab in the center of Kent County; Blackbird Creek is about half an hour north in the Smyrna/Townsend area, which is actually growing fairly robustly. We have over 6,000 acres within our Reserve boundaries and about 1,000 that we manage directly. There are really cool differences between the two landscapes; some of our MAD fellows have been looking at that.

Nik: Blackbird Creek is more trafficked?

Rachael: It has more visitors and a really nice trail system — a 5K loop and some other little trails. Fewer marsh flies and mosquitoes than we are currently enjoying in peak summer here at St. Jones.

Nik: Hmmm … have you ever thought about picking up the visitor center and moving it?

Rachael: I’ve definitely thought about that, and then realized we’re going to have to do that probably in about 20 to 30 years anyway, because sea level rise is going to mean that we’re going to need a kayak to get down that mile-long gravel lane. In the next 15 to 20 years, we need to make plans to relocate the main portion of our center. It’ll still be here, but it’ll be on a little island, and I don’t think our well or septic will continue to work.

Nik: A manager problem, definitely.

Rachael: Well … I don’t know if that’ll be me. I might be retired at that point.

Nik: It’s very clever of you to accelerate sea level rise along the Delaware coast.

Rachael: Yeah, I mean, it has nothing to do with the fact that we’re sinking here in the Mid-Atlantic.

Nik: Is it the weight of all the credit card companies in Delaware?

Rachael: They are just housed here on paper, I’m pretty sure.

Nik: Well, then you’d think there’d be rebound. You said you grew up in Delaware. I still find it inconceivable that anybody would stay where they grew up … 

Rachael: It’s one of those things. My mom is from Connecticut and my dad is from Pennsylvania. They came here and they stayed.

Nik: How did you come to work in coastal management?

Rachael: We were always a very outdoorsy family. I have core memories from six years old, my dad’s sitting me on top of the coffee table in the middle of the living room and he gives me a canoe paddle and he teaches me how to paddle. My parents were insane—we did a two-week portage in canoes up to Algonquin in New York and Canada when I was seven, my younger sibling was four, and my older brother who was 13. I’m pretty sure that once you do that, you never turn back from the outdoors. I think every child always wanted to be a marine biologist. I started with that. Then I went to geology, then I wanted anthropology. And then I went to college and took my first anthropology class and said, “Yeah, not for me.”

Nik: Why not?

Rachael: I liked the environment and animals. I went to school for wildlife conservation and ecology, but at graduation, I had zero plans as to what I was going to do with my life. One of my classmates said, “Hey! I’m the day camp director at a state park. You should come be a day camp counselor for the summer until you figure it out.” So I did. Then, a week later, he said, “Hey, I actually took a real-person job. I’m leaving.” So I became the day camp director.

Nik: As a wildlife biologist, how was it working with children for an entire summer?

Rachael: While I like to focus more on wildlife and ecology, I didn’t say I dislike people. People are part of wildlife and ecology. There is no difference between us and nature. There is no such thing as nature. We are all in this world together. But … it was rough.

Nik: Kids are a nightmare.

Rachael: I think eight-year-olds are my sweet spot because they’re competent enough to tie their own shoes. They’re still super engaged and interested, they want to show you the dragonfly nymph that they just caught in the creek. But earlier or later, I’m like, “Oh man.” But I did well enough that they wanted me to stay on, and I never left the state park system until I came here to the Reserve. That job posting really spoke to me because it got me back to what I got my degree in—more of stewardship, protection, training, and education, all based around research. 

Nik: Didn’t want to deal with people … ? 

Rachael: Have you ever been the manager of a water park? On a Memorial Day weekend?

Nik: According to ChatGPT, yes …

Rachael: Have you been in charge of a campground when you get the phone call at 2 AM because the septic is backing up? You know what I don’t have to deal with now? That.

Nik: You make it sound so glamorous … Why don’t people think about going into government service when they’re in college? Does the government not recruit? Does it not seem like a viable career? 

Rachael: I still think it is. Back then, I just didn’t know it was an option. I was like, “Well, I’m gonna get my degree, and I’m going to be saving animals and the planet.” Nobody in college said, “Here’s how you do it in real life.” And it also depends on who you work with. If you have a great team, then you’re golden. 

The team here at Delaware is super tight. The sectors are all highly integrated. Everybody’s really respectful of each other’s ideas. They all want to hear from each other and they all want to incorporate the other sector’s knowledge and skillsets into what they’re doing. The avian debris project—I like to call it “Trash Birds”— is doing a great job. 

Nik: Ummm … Trash Birds?

Rachael: For several years now, we’ve had interns— two NOAA Hollings Scholars and a DNREC intern —looking at human trash in bird nests. Basically, we’re looking at people’s trash that birds pick up and put in their nest. We go into the woods; we GPS nest locations; we record the species, the tree it was in, etc.. Then we take the nest; freeze it to get rid of any creepy-crawly things that might be in it; and then our interns and Hollings scholars dissect the nest and categorize the trash they find. 

Nik: You’re evicting bird families???

Rachael: We do this in the wintertime. And there are only certain birds we can collect from —others are protected because they might come back to the same nests. The intern this year is creating a standard operating procedure on how volunteers can continue this work. Ultimately, we could do a whole community science program where volunteers help us collect and dissect the nests. [Editor’s note: yes, all of this work is being conducted under federal and state authorized scientific collection permits!]

Nik: What have you found?

Rachael: Teeny tiny pieces of debris, constantly. For example, we have tarps on our boats. We know now that we need to replace them much more frequently because tarps disintegrate into tiny blue strands that birds are using in their nests. We aren’t sure it’s negatively impacting the birds, but plastic holds water and so if a nest is supposed to drain and be dry after a storm, they’ve basically woven in a plastic coating … 

Nik: Stupid birds! You’re supposed to tarp over the nest, not under it. I was just picking up strands in my yard from covering a fire pit for too many winters. I feel like there’s more tarp than grass in my yard now.

Rachael: I had a tarp on my woodpile. After our project, I immediately took it off and picked up every single little strand of tarp in my yard. But it’s not something people would normally think of. 

Nik: What else is going on, research-wise, in Delaware? In your small state that nobody cares about, is there anything that researchers care about?

Rachael: I would say so! Every year, we do the spawning survey for our horseshoe crabs in May and June. As a sidebar to that, we have a project going on right now looking at the things that have attached to and are living on their shells (ribbed muscles, barnacles, all sorts of different creatures). There’s a lot of questions and hypotheticals. We don’t know if these creatures negatively affect the crabs. We haven’t found any literature on this phenomenon yet; this might be one of the first studies into this particular matter. 

Nik: I look forward to seeing s elucidating updates about this and other research on the social media feeds that come out of the Delaware Reserve, which I have to say, are quite delightful, and have been for a very long time. There’s a long history of Delaware folks putting out very entertaining content.

Rachael: Agatha is good at that; no, our education team is really great at that. We recently hired a community engagement specialist named Sadie who has been putting out some really great content. Right now, they’re doing a podcast for the first time. Actually, it’s the first time DNREC has hosted a podcast. It’s called Skimmer Says. They’re releasing an episode every month on YouTube, Buzzsprout, Spotify, etc. 

Nik: Are people listening? Are behaviors changing in the State of Delaware?

Rachael: We hope so. It’s not necessarily a change-your-behavior podcast as much as interesting topics and guest presenters and important upcoming events. For example, June is Oceans Month, so they’ll be talking with a coworker in our Coastal Management Program who focuses on oceans.

Nik: I guess we’ll wrap up the interview with … Delaware. All right, fine. Give me your best pitch on Delaware, the thorn in the side of the Mid-Atlantic!

Rachael: New Jersey is the thorn. We are fantastic. I am a little bit biased towards Delaware. It’s a born-and-raised, Stockholm Syndrome kind of thing. So, we’re two hours tip-to-tip. We go from Piedmont, which is the foothills where our elevation comes into play, down all the way to our very southern end which actually has a bald cypress swamp.

In this one state, we have creeks and rolling hills (I’m not gonna claim that they’re much bigger than that), which is where I started my career at White Clay Creek State Park all the way in the north by the University of Delaware. Then all the way down at the bottom, I also worked at Trap Pond State Park, which is Cypress swamp, so you can kayak in between cypress trees. You have the beaches; remember, it’s only an hour wide at the base. You have some pretty cool stuff. 

Nik: What’s Delaware’s culinary contribution? Steamed cauliflower?

Rachael: No, it’s scrapple. We have the Rapa Scrapple factory here in Bridgeville. We have an Apple Scrapple Festival.

Nik: Scrapple is … the bits and pieces of things that get fried up?

Rachael: We don’t discuss what it is, Nik. You either eat it or you don’t. And the only debate is whether it’s a thick slice, a thin slice, a hard fry, or not. I personally don’t eat it.

Nik: My scrapple curiosity just plummeted.