About Bill’s Life Work

William (‘Bill’) D. Zeedyk was born in 1935 to New Jersey school teacher parents and by the age of 14 had decided he wanted to be a forester. And for 72 years and counting, he’s still at it.

As a high school student in 1949, he founded the Rockaway Junior Sportman’s Club. The twenty or so club members focused on advancing sportsmanship by hunting, fishing and in the summer months they worked on habitat improvement projects, including some in streams. Bill paid for his first year of college by trapping muskrats which further peaked his interests in habitat as he learned to love the wildlife associated with marshes and wetlands and their seasonal changes.

A First Career Begins

By 1956, with a B.S. degree in Forestry and Wildlife Management from the University of New Hampshire, he started what would become a 34 year-long career with the US Forest Service. Working in a variety of assignments in diverse regions, he studied and influenced habitat policy and action on thousands of acreages of lands across a wide swath of states including Maine, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Initially he started with forest surveying in Maine, New Hampshire and Delaware.  In Maine he, along with three other young foresters, traveled by canoe from July until the end of September. Ten days on and four days off, canoeing up the Allagash River in northern Maine, crossing over, and then traveling down the St. John’s River.  The survey work was largely statistical and consisted primarily of taking samples within a plot, identifying type of vegetation and trees and estimating how much volume of timber was present.

February of 1958 found Zeedyk entering the United States Army and serving in the 3^rd Armored Division in Germany as an aerial photographer.

Two years later, Zeedyk would return to the Forest Service in February of 1960 arriving in the Cumberland National Forest in Kentucky (which was renamed 2 years later as the Daniel Boone National Forest).  He started as an Assistant District Ranger for Morehead and Somerset Ranger Districts and by 1962 he would become the first Wildlife Biologist for the Daniel Boone National Forest. Before leaving this post, he would create guidelines on how to manage timber sales and forestry improvements in a way that minimized adverse effects on wildlife and fish and maximized the benefits from the timber harvest in a way that proved advantageous for wildlife and wildlands.

It is in this time period that he began to look more closely at the way roads were built. More specifically, he wondered how could they be stabilized after timber sales were over to minimize adverse effects on soil and water from runoff? He happened upon the work of a North Carolina-based Research Forester within the US Forest Service who had invented a road maintenance technique called ‘the rolling dip’.  Zeedyk would build his first one in the 1960’s.

On his 80^th birthday, he and his wife Mary journeyed back to find that first rolling dip built in the Daniel Boone National Forest 50 years earlier.  He wanted to know, was it still there? Was it still functioning? It was! “A minor victory” says Zeedyk.

As the mid 1960’s rolled in, those in forestry vocations began to pay attention to the Endangered and Threatened Species Act of 1966 (which was the predecessor to the current Endangered Species Act enacted in 1973). Kentucky-based Zeedyk helped to compile a list of species that were of concern for that region, including the red-cockaded woodpecker and a number of fish species.

When the Forest Service began to redraw its boundary lines for regional offices, Zeedyk by default was moved down to Atlanta.  In 1967, as Timber and Wildlife Coordination Specialist, he became part of the Southeastern Region where the diversity of lands and ecosystems he interacted with included an even greater range. The late 1960’s and early 70’s saw the peak of reservoir construction and three large ones were planned for forest lands in the Southeastern Region. So Zeedyk began to interact with Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Army Corp of Engineers. He became much more interested in water management and how to mitigate the adverse impact of significant damming of natural flows.

From 1970-75, Zeedyk was Staff Officer for Soil, Water and Wildlife & Fisheries (over four national forests in North Carolina) and he supervised and worked alongside hydrologists, soil scientists, fisheries biologists and other wildlife biologists. They fostered a set of guidelines for the southeastern national forests that included bird and wildlife habitat management and improvement, timber coordination, reforestation efforts and road construction.  Clean water was also key to the livelihoods of 98 private trout fish farms, two state fish hatcheries, a national fish hatchery and a cigarette paper plant.

By 1975, Zeedyk would be transferred to the Washington DC office as  National Coordinator of the US Forest Service Endangered Species Program.

Zeedyk would be key in the directive manual for Forest compliance with the newly created Endangered Species Act on forest lands.  He worked closely with Fish and Wildlife Service, the Wildlife Management Institute and other non-profits to set the ‘bar’. 

Zeedyk landed in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1977 as Staff Director over Wildlife and Fisheries and would serve the rest of his US Forest Service career in the Southwestern region. At that time the Southwest Bald eagle only had 7 remaining pairs in Arizona and in New Mexico only 11 pairs of Peregrine Falcon remained. The Mexican Wolf no longer existed in the United States. The Gila Trout, The Gila Top Minnow and The Mexican Spotted Owl were all of concern. Each species had its own special set of reasons why it was on the list (be it habitat loss, pesticide poisoning, illegal hunting or other) and also required its own unique multi-agency plan and oversight to remain part of this world.

In November of 1990, Bill retired. After a one year trip around the world, he returned home to northern New Mexico and for a few years honed his talents in making sellable wood crafts. He was also an outdoor writer for the New Mexico Fishing Monthly magazine.

This new-found time also afforded Zeedyk the flexibility to focus even more keenly on simple nature-based restoration methods.  He enrolled in stream restoration workshops taught by Dave Rosgen and began experimenting with hand built structures on public, private and tribal lands in Old Mexico and the American Southwest.

He explored  indigenous methods with those whose ancestors created them.  He followed his hunches and inclinations on working with water in a more collaborative way.

A Second Career Percolates Up

By 1994, Zeedyk had fully forged his next chapter, birthing his own consulting business with his wife Gene and specializing in wetland, meadow and riparian habitat restoration design using low-tech, low-cost, low-risk methods that favor native materials as resources.

In the late 1990’s, a major project kicked off at Hubbell Trading Post in Arizona that would ultimately place Bill’s methods and innovations on a more visible stage.  Here he faced failures along with successes, gleaning lessons from each.  He would also experience great gains and losses, including the passing of his wife Gene.

Hubbell Trading Post would launch Zeedyk into the next sphere of restoration projects as well as into the next realm of sharing his knowledge with others.

Through his offerings over the next 25 year and counting, Zeedyk has happily shared his knowledge with national conservation leaders, heads of small watershed associations and students of all ages. A rarity, he has also gained favor among a wide continuum of people who are often known for being at odds with one another.

He’s imparted practical knowledge and wisdom to federal, state, and local agencies, tribal nations, NGOs, industry representatives, road maintenance crews, environmentalists, fisherman, wildlife enthusiasts, hunters, scientists, urbanites, youth, farmers, ranchers and private landowners.

And with every audience or collaboration, of one person or of many, he has asked question after question in an effort to help others learn to Read the Landscape and Think Like Water.

He’s mentored 25+ proteges who have gone on to make their own unique contributions in the field, most with successful businesses to boot. Has field-taught over 3,000+ volunteers. Has master-designed the improvement of over 400+ miles of streams, 4,000+ acres of riparian floodplain areas and many many miles of dirt roads.

Throughout Zeedyk has continued his consulting business, and when he married Mary Maulsby in 2005, she became a driving force within the business as well. They updated the business name to Zeedyk Ecological Consulting Services, LLC and continued it successfully as the geographical areas wherein Bill consulted also expanded. As 2021 rolled around, they decided to finally close the business.

Bill Zeedyk retires again at the age of 86.  But he’s still teaching and spreading his knowledge as enthusiastically as before.  “The number of acres of degraded floodplains and wetlands out there is overwhelming”, he says.  And continues “The job is big.  But the methods are learnable.”

He’s authored (and co-authored) a number of books, numerous instructional handouts and his work has been featured in industry periodicals and academic journals.

With his passion of teaching and inspiring the next generation, Zeedyk has conducted symposiums on a number of campuses including Northern Arizona State University, Colorado State University, Western Colorado State University, New Mexico Highlands University, University of New Mexico, and University of Missouri along with field mentoring youth corps of all ages.

His methods have been championed on the ground in England, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Australia, Mongolia and China.

Through his workshops, symposiums, books and on-the-ground projects across a wide continuum of people and places, Zeedyk’s influence has rippled far beyond the American Southwest. 

This is that Story.