Gary Juenger helps ranchers improve property

DAYTON - Gary Juenger spends his days with deer, blue heron, Canada geese, badgers, mallards, a variety of ducks and assorted other land and air creatures that call the Carson and Walker river basins home.

Actually, Juenger spends his time with ranchers who want to improve their properties as wildlife habitats. Juenger disputes the notion that ranchers are a detriment to wildlife.

"Virtually every land owner I've worked with has an awareness of the wildlife and a pride in helping preserve wildlife," Juenger said. "The ranchers almost without exception like wildlife. They provide for the needs of wildlife.

"One thing we try to get across is that cattle and wildlife are not mutually exclusive."

But ranchers are more fluent with grazing cattle and sheep than heron nesting or deer foraging. That's where Juenger's expertise comes in.

Juenger is a fish and wildlife biologist based at the Dayton Valley Conservation District, one of nine conservation districts along the Carson and Walker rivers.

The position was created last year to serve all nine conservation districts as well as work closely with Western Nevada Resource Conservation and Development Inc., the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Juenger has two primary missions:

- He makes suggestions to ranchers who want to improve their property for wildlife.

- He works with the conservation districts to make riverbank improvement projects amenable to wildlife.

Dayton rancher Tom Minor has worked with Juenger in both regards. Minor is chairman of the Dayton Valley Conservation District as well as part of the Minor Ranch family.

"Gary brings a lot of wildlife experience that we didn't have here," Minor said. "Some of our drainage ponds have filled with sediment and are no longer viable as wildlife areas. Gary made suggestions on how to make them better."

Juenger's fascination in wildlife dates back to his pre-school days on the Upper Texas Coast near Baytown. He gained his specialized interest in water fowl in the region's coastal marshes and pine woods.

Juenger, 43, majored in wildlife management at Texas A&M and served his first five years in the field with the Soil Conservation Service (renamed as the Natural Resources Conservation Service). His range conservation duties involved assisting with water development, fencing ranges and encouraging grazing rotation in Oklahoma, Washington and New Mexico.

Juenger followed that with 11 years as an assistant manager at three U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife refuges in Texas and two in Louisiana.

"The first couple years in Louisiana was something like I'll never be involved in again," Juenger said. "We were converting cropland areas into bottomland hard wood forests. I couldn' t even sleep at night knowing the things I would be involved in. The banks came to us with $35,000 and said, 'We want to reestablish a nesting habitat for bald eagles and you're going to help us.'"

Juenger managed the Asamera Ranch in Storey County in the three years before taking on the wildlife biologist duties on the Carson and Walker Rivers. That job ended as Gulf Oil sold the 106,000-acre ranch that has since become the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.

Juenger took the modern approach to seeking a new job and logged on theInternet. But he found the Dayton Valley Conservation District job the old fashioned way.

"Of all the sophisticated Internet searches, I found this in the Reno paper," he said.

Have some ranchland that you want to improve as wildlife habitat?

Expert advice is available

Who: Gary Juenger

What: wildlife biologist based at Dayton Valley Conservation District

Juenger's coverage area: the entire Carson and Walker river basin area

Phone: 883-3525