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As we enter a new year, The Corps Network has asked Corps alumni to reflect on their Corps experiences. We want to know how they were impacted by their service term and how their Corps helped lead them to where they are now. Ronald Henderson is a GulfCorps alumnus of Franklin’s Promise Coalition and the Student Conservation Association. He began his Corps journey five years ago and is currently working for The Nature Conservancy Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravine Preserve.
- What led you to initially join a Corps?
I joined the Corps in 2017. Pretty much everyone who was on the original crew of Franklin’s Promise, I played football with. So, I pretty much knew everybody that was working there. I just so happened to lose my job at a chocolate shop, and I remembered seeing Franklin’s Promise, so I applied to it, because I was tired of working in a restaurant, and that’s how I got started, and here I am five years later.
- What were you doing before you joined Franklin’s Promise?
I was working at a chocolate shop, I worked at a pizza shop, and I worked at Burger King leading up to that job. I decided to leave the restaurant business. Conservation originally wasn’t the main pull. Originally, I was looking at Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). Walking in I thought, maybe I’ll do FWC, maybe I’ll do prescribed burns.
- What were your projects at Franklin’s Promise?
The regular Franklin Crew did a lot of slash-pile-removal, sandpile removal, we worked on boardwalks a lot. We did some work in the Air Force base doing conservation work. At Franklin’s Promise we had a food drive, we had Toys-for-Tots there, so we helped with all that. Whenever there was a hurricane, we handed out sandbags. We also had an emergency relief program emergency relief program. Whenever disasters happened, they would call on us and we would hand out sandbags, food, water, and stuff like that.
My time at the Bay Crew (a GulfCorps Crew working with Franklin’s Promise) for a good five months was strictly experimental. When I started, it was just starting so we had to hire everybody and once we got everybody on board, we got them all certified. Originally, we were going to be working in Econfina River State Park doing work out there, but I never got to because I got my first fire crew job right at the beginning of 2020, so I left, but we did a few things. We did some sand pond removal. We were cutting fire lines. Pretty much the Franklin Crew and the Bay Crew were working together on projects.
- How did you go from Franklin’s Promise to Student Conservation Association (SCA)?
I applied, I did the interview, got the job, and met four of my best friends – I’m still friends with everybody. The fire crew still meets up regularly. I was with the fire crew for about five months. Then we got shut down because of COVID-19.
- What was your experience like as part of the SCA Fire Crew?
I think that being on that fire crew taught me a lot about myself. That was right around the corner of my son being born. My son was born in July 2020, but the fire crew ended in April. I got a job that same month, but the experience was nice.
I turned 21 as soon as the crew started. I knew two people from the crew. I learned a lot. I saw a lot of pretty places. Working in partnership with The Nature Conservancy Alabama really looked good on my resume, as well. I did a lot of prescribed burns.
We did pitcher plant habitat restoration that is so sacred. They’re so endangered and rare that you can’t even pull out a phone because you don’t want anyone knowing where they are because they are some of the rarest pitcher plants.
- What were some of the highlights of your SCA experience?
There was this crazy 1,000-acre burn near Flag Mountain. We burned at this sacred Native American land and each crew got 200 acres to burn. I remember my crew got an extra 100 acres to do and it was awesome. I was tired, but it was awesome.
I think my favorite part of the whole thing was just camping everywhere we burned at. A prescribed burn takes more than eight hours. Depends on how many acres it is and how complex the burn is but usually 8-13 hours.
We stayed on a wildlife management area, as well, and so the hunters that came in, sometimes they would have extra meat that they wouldn’t want because they were hunting for sport, so they would give us a deer or a hog or a racoon or a beaver to skin and they just let us keep the whole thing.
On our days off we would drink beer and skin animals. We wouldn’t eat out often because our leader had a full cooler of all these wild animals. We would make our lunch for the week out of these animals. We had wild leeks growing around our house, so we picked and pickled them.
- What certifications did you achieve throughout your time with Corps?
Wildland Fire Certifications, Wildland Fire Certification, Aquatic Grasses Certification, OSHA, CPR, and Wilderness First Aid.
- How did your experiences lead you to where you are now?
The company I worked for after SCA is called Long Leaf Alliance, which branched off The Nature Conservancy Florida (TNC) about 12 years ago. I was doing biology work for the reticulate of the Flywood Salamander. It was technically a seasonal job. The first season was more like field work. We would go in and clear out the ponds for the salamander. The second season I worked there we did more biology work, like finding [salamanders] and counting them and counting the legs, how long their bodies are and putting them back. Or we would take some dye and inject it into the tail of the salamander so we could tell if we’d already caught them or not as they got bigger. That was when I really got into snakes. You could say I became a herpetologist through that.
I was with Long Leaf Alliance for a year and a half and now I am with TNC. What helped me get this job was being friends with all the partners I met with through GulfCorps. GulfCorps really helped me network. I am still friends with every higher-up that I met from GulfCorps. I already knew the hiring supervisor from when I worked at GulfCorps—and my Crew Leader, Brad, I burned with him, probably a few months before I even got this job. And the person that recommended this job, I burnt with him a bunch of times, so I pretty much knew everybody when I got here.
- What do you do in your current position?
We do native seed collection for water grass, we do native seed planting, we do prescribe burns and we do efforts to reintroduce the Indigo Snake into the population. We release a certain number of snakes a year. Basically, it is a land management job. I help manage Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravine Preserve. I do tractor work, pretty much anything you can think of chainsaw work, planting, collecting seeds, herbicide…
- What advice would you give people considering joining a Corps?
Network, network, network. It is one of the most important things you can get from GulfCorps. Network, and get all the certifications that you can. You never know, somewhere down the road they might be handy.