“We can’t protect what we don’t understand.”
Oft ascribed to Jacques‘ son Jean-Michel Cousteau, this is a favorite adage of Todd Parrott Witcher, who will retire at the end of this year. The search is underway for Witcher’s successor in the role of executive director at Discover Life in America, the nonprofit science partner of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Witcher’s middle name is his mother’s maiden name, Parrott. This is fitting because his most vivid childhood memories involve learning about birds in, of all places, Byrdstown, Tennessee, from his maternal grandfather, Hollis Gladston Parrott.
“As the county extension agent, part of Papa Parrott’s job was bringing new kinds of domesticated animals to farmers,” Witcher said. “He had an incubator, and this had a big influence on me. He was incubating quail eggs, the incubator was self-turning, and I was fascinated. If I was staying with him, I’d watch the incubator most of the time.”
Back home in Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee, Witcher had four brothers, and it was a crowded house. So he spent a lot of time outside—walking, watching birds, or playing in the dirt. Living nearby, his paternal grandparents were also farmers.
“After school I would get off the bus at my grandparents’ house and help my grandpa feed and collect eggs from the chickens. I was shy, so I liked interacting with things I didn’t have to talk to.”
Both sets of grandparents influenced Witcher’s interest in animals and natural history. But it was a book in Papa Parrott’s library that set him on a course toward the science of discovery.
“I remember reading about all these birds — Carolina parakeet, ivory-billed woodpecker — that had gone extinct,” he said. “I was 10, maybe, and I can remember being shocked. How could human beings let that happen? Why did somebody not intervene?”
Witcher began to think that he should find a way to intervene. In fact, he harbored an innocent hope that he could go and find these missing birds. It wasn’t until he became older and learned about habitat loss that he realized they were truly gone forever.
“I was not surprised by the human behavior but by nobody doing anything about it,” he said. “And then, of course, I learned people are doing something about it, but it’s just not very effective.”
Doing something about it
Witcher wanted to be one of the people doing something to prevent further extinction. In high school he “worked on the animal part of science,” and at the University of Tennessee (where Papa Parrott had earned his agriculture degree) Witcher got a degree in biology.
At first, under pressure to earn a decent living, he took a job in the medical supply industry. “I hated it,” he recalls. But then, over time, he transitioned to an onsite caretaker position at Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville, Tennessee — “there were birds involved, non-releasable education birds” — where he held various positions for 18 years.
And then one day he heard about an effort to catalog all the living species in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
“I had read a story about the project and knew it existed. Then someone called me and said, ‘There’s this position that seems right down your alley, and you should look into it.’ So I did.”
In 2007, the introverted boy who loved watching the incubator and feeding the chickens became the executive director of Discover Life in America. It’s the nonprofit park partner that manages the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) — a community science effort that, since its inception on Earth Day 1998, has worked to better understand the ecological needs and relationships between all living species in the Smokies. To date, this unprecedented collaboration has discovered 1,114 species new to science, 11,527 new species records for the park, and a total of 22,977 known species in the Smokies.
“The science we have done has been amazing,” Witcher said. “I don’t feel responsible for the specific science, but we kept the doors open, and that made it possible.”
When Witcher started, there was a real threat that DLiA “was not going to keep going.” Maneuvering the fundraising aspect of such an esoteric nonprofit was no small feat. And then, by chance, at a Leadership Sevier program, Witcher met Hensley Worsham and, through him, family members Earl and Margit Worsham. They owned a forested 5,000-acre property just outside Gatlinburg that protected a large population of synchronous fireflies.
“Todd’s a great schmoozer,” said Will Kuhn, DLiA’s director of science and research. “Through his connections, he met the Worshams, and they offered to let DLiA show off the fireflies to raise a little money for the organization.”
Keeping science at the heart
Today, the Fireflies at Norton Creek event is DLiA’s signature fundraiser, often bringing in more than half its annual revenue while showcasing Smokies biodiversity for hundreds of paying supporters. Helping make the event possible each June are DLiA’s summer interns, a successful mentorship initiative founded by Witcher.
Feeding ATBI discovery, Witcher championed use of the iNaturalist app, an easy way for park visitors to become community scientists by uploading pictures and information about species they encounter — often contributing much-needed records for hard-to-document species.
“Todd has played a remarkable role in advancing our understanding of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and ensuring that science remains at the heart of how we care for this extraordinary place,” said Dana Soehn, president and chief executive officer of Friends of the Smokies, who has worked with Witcher throughout his 20-year DLiA career.
Kuhn met Witcher in 2012 when he was a graduate student at Rutgers University visiting Knoxville for an Entomological Society of America conference.
“He had a booth in the big exhibit hall,” Kuhn said, “and he was this gruff guy who smiled a lot as he pointed to all these photos and illustrations of water bears [tardigrades] and diatoms and ferns in the Great Smoky Mountains.”
Witcher must have made a pretty compelling case for the project he was singlehandedly spearheading to catalog all life in the Smokies.
“I left that meeting and went back to New Jersey to finish school,” said Kuhn, “but in hindsight, he’d gotten me hooked from that moment.”
Once he moved to Knoxville in 2016, Kuhn served on the DLiA board for a couple of years before joining the staff and relieving Witcher of being the sole full-time employee.
“Before I met Todd, my focus was mostly on insects,” Kuhn said. “Traveling together to different parts of the region, he’d point out different trees and wildflowers and other plants and tell me about them. His fondness for our native flora has rubbed off on me. I’ve learned to see the beauty in the web of interactions between bug and plant.”
From flailing to thriving
Humble, tenacious, and visionary, Witcher shows a marked determination to do what is right, what is fair, what is respectful of others, and what will make the project succeed. With a gift for seeing the big picture, he has cultivated remarkable insight and leadership that have taken DLiA from a one-man band to a staff of four and a volunteer force of thousands.
“When the economy is bad and everything is really expensive, organizations like DLiA don’t survive, because people have to use their extra income to pay their bills,” he said. “Being nimble has helped us survive, but growing so that we have enough staff to do everything was critical.”
Witcher’s soft-spoken demeanor has not kept him from creating vast professional networks in Southern Appalachia, the nation, and abroad. The youth who was obsessed with preventing extinction grew up to give presentations about the ATBI to organizations seeking to emulate its discovery model in Germany and China.
“Through his leadership and ability to bring people together, Todd has helped connect researchers, park staff, students, and the public to the incredible biodiversity of the Smokies,” said Soehn. “His impact can be seen not only in the science he helped make possible, but in the generations of people he has inspired to study, understand, and protect this park.”
Connecting me both to my job in the Smokies and to the temporary gig in an Asheville-based nature store where I met my husband, Witcher is a dependable colleague and a joy to see at board meetings or park partner events. I believe that, not unlike the fireflies that illuminated his path to successful fundraising, Witcher’s wisdom, strength, and grace will illuminate DLiA’s path to success many years into the future.
“Todd led DLiA’s transition from flailing to thriving,” said Kuhn. “He’s worked with our board through strategic planning that makes us more intentional and efficient, provides better pay and benefits for our staff, and will make us more resilient in the face of future challenges. He’s done everything he can to leave us on a solid foundation.”
Frances Figart is the creative services director for the 29,000-member Smokies Life, a partner supporting Great Smoky Mountains National Park by providing educational products and services such as this column. Learn more at SmokiesLife.org and reach the author at frances@smokieslife.org.