Wildlife biologist Kim Delozier is retiring the end of this year after 32 years of service at Great Smoky Mountain National Park that sits in both North Carolina and Tennessee. As one who frequents GSMNP often I’m always impressed at how well they manage the resources with the number of visitors this park attracts.

When Delozier started out, the Smokies employed just four people in resource management. Today, that staff includes 70 to 80 people including seasonal workers. Delozier’s job as a wildlife biologist kicked into high gear when the Smokies embarked on a series of wildlife reintroductions in keeping with the park’s overall mission to restore native ecosystems.
Starting with peregrine falcons in 1984 and moving through elk restoration in 2001, all of the park’s wildlife reintroductions over the past two decades began as experiments to determine if the species could co-exist with the park’s natural and human landscape.
The peregrine falcon releases were successful (in 1997 the park documented its first peregrine nest in the Smokies since 1943), as were efforts starting in the late 1980s to restore river otters.
“If I had to choose an animal to come back as after I die, it would be a river otter,” Delozier said. “They seem to play all the time.”
In the early 1990s, the Smokies and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tried unsuccessfully to reintroduce red wolves in the park. None of the wolf pups born in the park survived, and after 10 years, the project came to a halt.
“We couldn’t release enough wolves to out-compete the coyotes in the park,” Delozier said. “You just can’t take a captive animal, open the cage and expect it to make it in the wild.”
In 2001, the park launched an ambitious program to bring elk – a species that hadn’t roamed the mountains since the late 1700s – back to Cataloochee Valley in North Carolina. Delozier said what he remembers most about this successful campaign was the tremendous support from partners like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the Friends of the Smokies and the public at large.
“Unlike the wolf reintroduction, bringing elk back to the park was something people genuinely wanted to see happen,” he said.

Knox News

While I’ve never met Mr. Deloizer I’ve certainly benefited from his and the rest of the staffs efforts every time I stop to watch river otters play or I watch a bull elk chasing cows across the meadows of Catalocchee. I hope he enjoys his retirement.

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