Bill Ashe has devoted a lifetime to conserving natural resources both locally and nationally. The longtime Harvard resident has earned many accolades for this work, some of which are proudly displayed in his Myrick Lane home, including his citation from the president of the United States for his national efforts to preserve wetlands, and Harvard’s own Citizen of Note certificate, which he was awarded at Annual Town Meeting a few years ago.
Now Ashe has received a new honor, though this one can’t hang on a wall. On May 27, the Oxbow National Wildlife Refuge will hold a celebration dedicating its new visitor facility on Hospital Road in Devens. Though health conditions prevent Ashe from leaving home too often these days, he is hopeful he’ll be able to attend the ceremony next Friday, because the new visitor facility and the walking trail that originates there will be named for him.
“We are so pleased and honored to dedicate this facility to Bill in recognition for the tremendous service he gave the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and our country, for wildlife,” said Libby Herland in a phone interview this week. Herland, the project leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s eastern Massachusetts national wildlife reserves, met Ashe in 1988 when she joined the agency. Ashe was the Northeast Region’s deputy regional director at the time, supervising wildlife refuges and staff in 13 states. Ashe, who joined the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1953, was responsible over his 38-year career for directly contributing to the preservation of more than 840,000 acres of federal land in many areas of the country, including the Sevilleta National Wildlife Reserve in New Mexico, the Ding Darling Refuge on Sanibel Island in Florida, and the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.
‘A tangible impact’
“Because of Bill, we have almost a million acres of land that has been left intact, preserved forever for wildlife and for the benefit of the American people. That’s a tangible impact,” said Herland.
Ashe speaks about each area he worked to conserve with the admiration and pride of a lifelong nature lover, sharing photos and tidbits of information about the endangered species and precious habitats found in each. Wetlands have been a particular passion for Ashe throughout his career. “They are extremely important and more apt to be under threat than normal uplands. They tend to be abused,” said Ashe in an interview in his home this week.
The Oxbow National Wildlife Refuge was one of these wetland projects, which he started working on when he was still with the service. He continued advocating for the project as a town volunteer and when he retired and started to work with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF).
Bill Ashe (left) at a land deal closing on Cape Cod in 1985. (Courtesy photo)
When Fort Devens closed in 1996, Ashe was instrumental in securing the transfer of 836 acres of Army land to the Fish and Wildlife Service, and he worked to acquire and permanently protect the 125-acre Watt farm in Still River as part of the Oxbow refuge. “The Oxbow refuge exists because of Bill,” said Herland. “I don’t know that it would have happened or would be the size it is now if it wasn’t for Bill’s very close involvement with the protection of those lands.”
For his part, Ashe speaks about his success with humility: “I identified areas that needed to be protected in some way and then got state and private organizations to help out. I developed work associations with a lot of groups; that’s one reason I was successful.”
Selectwoman Lucy Wallace, a dedicated conservationist in her own right who worked with Ashe both at the NFWF and as a town volunteer, agreed in a phone interview this week: “He always was maintaining bigger relationships. He had contacts in every organization in the conservation world. He always tried to find a way everybody could work together.”
A master of collaboration
That ability to create and nurture productive partnerships turned out to be one of the most important elements of Ashe’s successful habitat-conservation career. Ashe had a talent for forging and maintaining relationships between the people and organizations who would donate, fund, and manage the land. “He was a master of collaboration,” said Herland. “His way was to find the commonality and bring people together in a way that was good for everybody.”
Ashe’s people skills also made him an excellent mentor and manager. “He could see where people were doing something they were good at, and wanted to help them be able to do it,” said Wallace. “He liked to see other people succeed, maybe because he had to work hard to get where he got.”
Ashe recognizes the importance that developing others played in his own career success. “What I’m proud of is I got programs straightened out,” he said. “The Boston office was operating at a lower level than any of our other regional offices, and when I left, it was probably the strongest region in the country. You do that by developing staff and helping them accomplish the mission you’re charged to enforce, and supporting them in their work.”
Ashe supported his staff even when problems arose. One of the defining moments of Ashe’s career was when he stood up for a refuge manager who was under some political pressure to turn a blind eye to land-use violations in a refuge outside Washington, D.C. Ashe refused to remove the manager, and he said he paid a price for that stand, ultimately being reassigned a few months before his retirement.
His moral compass
“He had a sense of his moral compass,” said Wallace. “He knew what was right and he knew what the employee was doing was right, and he was going to support that employee even at a cost to himself. There are not many people willing to do that. He has a lot of integrity.”
Ashe carried those collaborative and relationship-building skills into his service as a selectman and on the Planning Board in Harvard. “I worked with people who I disagreed with, good people, who taken in context had been a real benefit for the town,” he said. “I didn’t support everything they went along with; they didn’t support everything I proposed. At the end of the discussion, we could sit down and do our job and get things done and get along.” Ashe is a strong proponent of volunteerism and believes the people of Harvard are its greatest natural resource. “Conservation and other developments will take care of themselves if we get the right type of people as volunteers: knowledgeable, hardworking, and committed. They will know what’s right for the town and the schools and open space and sensible development. I don’t want to see people taking it along lines that are destructive, though that’s easy to do,” he said.
“He always said that where you have the greatest impact is what you do locally,” said Wallace, who has been personally encouraged by Ashe’s example to get involved in local conservation and town governance efforts. “I think his legacy on the selectmen is setting a tone for how the town fathers can be mindful of what they should be doing. It can be adversarial, but I think he always tried to find a way everybody could work together.”
Ashe is characteristically humble when asked about what he imagines his legacy to be, suggesting it is really up to others to decide that, not him. When pressed, he admits, “I tried to do a good job, and I think a lot of people agree that I did do a good job. What more can you ask? You leave along the way dozens and scores of areas that have benefited from your work. There’s a satisfaction that goes along with that.”
Effective nationally and locally
In Herland’s eyes, Ashe’s conservation legacy is one of much grander scope. “There aren’t many conservationists in the history of the U.S. who have been really effective at the national level and then at the local level, too,” she said. “Bill goes from the national level to the regional level and then all the way down to the local level, literally to his backyard.”
Now it is in that “backyard” that Ashe’s local impact will be memorialized—by the new Bill Ashe Visitor Facility. The facility offers an unheated pavilion, restrooms, and parking lot, and will be a central location for groups to meet for environmental education and exploration, said Herland. The building has many eco-friendly features, including composting toilets, porous pavement in the parking lot, and, soon, a green roof with vegetation that will help absorb rainwater. And, said Herland, the Bill Ashe Trail connects with other Oxbow trails, together offering more than 4 miles of hiking and exploration along the Nashua River, from Devens to Still River. The May 27 ceremony is open to the public and is expected to be standing room only. Those planning to attend are asked to RSVP to Herland at libby_herland@fws.gov so that enough refreshments will be available.
For his part, Ashe, who is homebound and misses being out in the woods, is looking forward to the dedication ceremony and to watching the Oxbow continue to thrive. Not one for what he calls “spouting out about yourself,” Ashe is nonetheless pleased about the dedication. While he was instrumental in establishing the visitor facility, he was surprised when they wanted to put his name on it. “I had nothing to do with that!” he exclaimed. But, said Ashe, smiling, “I feel honored, very much so.”
