In 1990, David Beckmann started working at Fort McCoy as a biological technician trainee through the installation’s Cooperative Education Program while still in school at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
At that time, he did not really think he would end up staying at the post for 32 years. After receiving his Bachelor of Science degree from Stevens Point in wildlife management in 1994, he continued to do the biological trainee position for many more years while pursuing a graduate degree.
“When I started here, I was still in college at Stevens Point,” Beckmann said. “And the plan initially was to come in work for a few years, get my degree, and move on to other positions. But Fort McCoy kind of kept me here because it’s a unique chunk of land.”
In 2002, Beckmann continued his support to the Fort McCoy wildlife management program as a contractor for five years. By 2007, Beckmann was then hired as a staff wildlife biologist at Fort McCoy. Today he works with the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch (NRB).
“My overall responsibilities with wildlife management (at Fort McCoy) is about managing the habitats for a wide array of wildlife species — not necessarily just endangered species,” Beckmann said. “This includes deer, songbirds, forest birds, small mammals, and more. We look a lot at the habitat and the food sources for the different species on the installation so they can survive on their own.”
Beckmann’s work also includes management of deer hunting, small game hunting, and turkey hunting programs at the installation. These are all things, he said, that have grown from the time he started.
“When I started here, a lot of stuff was pretty new,” Beckmann said. “We didn’t have the endangered species programs yet at that time. And we didn’t have an urban (cantonment area) deer hunt. So basically my first year here, we put together the cantonment urban deer hunt. At that time there was a large population of deer in the cantonment area. We started doing deer surveys where we were getting up to 300 deer in the cantonment on one parade field.
“And with that we knew that there was a need to reduce the population,” Beckmann said. “The deer weren’t very healthy. There were also a lot of accidents on Highway 21 and on some of the other major roads. So … that hunt has been going on for more than 30 years now, and it’s been a great success to maintain the urban population and maintain the health of those deer as well.”
Beckmann was also a critical leader in starting the first youth deer hunt at Fort McCoy and the first deer hunt for people with disabilities. Both are programs he said he’s proud to be a part of as well.
In addition to deer management, Beckmann said he was proud to be a part of the effort to get endangered species management started at Fort McCoy. It’s work, he said, that was started with his mentor, former Fort McCoy Biologist Kim Mello, as well as current NRB Chief Tim Wilder who also worked for many years as an endangered species biologist.
“It wasn’t long after I started here when the Karner Blue butterfly was proposed for being listed as an endangered species,” Beckmann said. “(Kim) was pretty proactive on getting ahead of the game. So we started to do some surveys for the Karner Blue butterfly. At that time, we worked with the Nature Conservancy … and low and behold we found out we have one of the best populations in the nation here. And a lot of that is tied to the military training and how it affects the habitat.”
Since the 1990s, Fort McCoy has been the go-to place for hundreds of researchers for the Karner Blue butterfly, Beckmann said. And that work had led to the success of Fort McCoy recognizing and supporting work for other endangered species at the installation and in Wisconsin as well.
“I think a lot of that goes back to Kim, too,” Beckmann said. “He did have a lot of foresight in the endangered species and in the invasive species program to which kind of started on Fort McCoy as well . Having that kind of a mentor kind of helped solidify the importance of the natural resources work I was doing and in staying ahead of the game, especially with the Karner Blue. We also did do a lot of work with some researchers at that time.”
At Fort McCoy, the battle against invasive plant species takes place every year on post, and Beckmann also has had a big part of that as well. He said decades ago that the fight against invasives wasn’t as strong as it is now, and the installation has better control of invasive species now than ever before.
“We started a program I think in 1991,” Beckmann said. “And at that time the main species we had concern about was spotted knapweed and leafy spurge. They were both pretty extensive on McCoy. But we really didn’t know to what extent. So, we started to do some mapping of those as well and found out that it was pretty much all over the place, especially on South Post. At that time, Kim understood that there was a need for invasive plant control because the damage it does. … So, we started to do some herbicide treatments.
“At that time when we started, Fort McCoy is probably the only place in Wisconsin that was doing invasive species work,” Beckmann said. “I think the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources was slowly getting into it with a couple of people, but a lot of people thought it was a lost cause and not even worth doing it. Of course, we kept going and going and found more species, but we were finding a lot of good success in controlling some of these species and improving the natural habitat and military lands. And then from there it kind of spread again to the state of Wisconsin. We were kind of a big influencer with the state. We collaborated a lot helped provide information and then within Department of Defense. We started getting more involved with (National) Military Fish and Wildlife Association, and we developed an invasive species working group.”
And over his career, Beckmann has been part of a team within the NRB that has earned awards from the Army’s Installation Management Command, the Secretary of the Army, and at the Department of Defense level for outstanding natural resources management. And Beckmann said winning awards is great but having a great team where everyone gets along and learns from each other is probably the best reward.
“Well, you know I am proud of the work that I have done, and that we have as a team,” Beckmann said. “I think the team that we have — it’s a close-knit group. Some of them are retired now, but we’re almost like a family, we work well together, and we’re all about the same age. We all were especially deeply dedicated to the resource and military mission, so we were able to work with each other to accomplish a lot of things. It wasn’t like forestry just did their own thing and didn’t care about anything wildlife. We all met together, discussed different work that we were doing to make sure that it was beneficial for all sides — military, wildlife, fish, timber harvest, and more.
“I think that working together as a group reduces any infighting or big heads that could happen, and you get a lot more work done when people are on the same page,” Beckmann said.
Besides Kim Mello, Beckmann worked many years in NRB with former NRB Chief Mark McCarty and former Fort McCoy Forester James Kerkman.
He also currently works with Wilder, Forester Charles Mentzel, Fisheries Biologist John Noble, Endangered Species Biologist Jessup Weichelt, Natural Resources Specialist/Wildlife Biologist Kevin Luepke, Forestry Technicians Nick Randall and Tim Parry, and Julie Steinhoff at the Permit Sales Office.
Beckmann officially retires Sept. 30. He said he will miss seeing people he has seen coming to Fort McCoy for the gun-deer seasons for the past three decades, and he’ll miss working with his teammates. But he’s also looking forward to what’s next.
See more of Beckmann’s interview on video and audio by visiting the Fort McCoy page on the Defense Visual Information Distribution System at https://www.dvidshub.net/fmpao.
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