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Obituary

He led the bay area fight for birds

He was an Audubon Society employee for more than three decades who loved birds since childhood.

By ALEXANDRA ZAYAS
Published November 13, 2005

TAMPA - One memory of Rich Paul, the wildlife biologist and environmentalist guardian of Tampa's bird population, stands out for his wife, Ann Paul.

Every spring, Mr. Paul's two passions combined into one super season: the height of bird nesting, and spring training for his beloved Yankees.

Between bites of his stadium hot dog, Mr. Paul would scan the sky for peregrine falcons and eagles. He'd compete with Ann and his friend Rich Miller to see how many species they could spot. They once counted 30.

Richard Tompkins Paul died Friday (Nov. 11, 2005) at LifePath Hospice in Temple Terrace after a yearlong battle with cancer. He was 59.

"He had a lifetime interest in biology, birds," his wife said. Every afternoon when he was a child, Paul would visit a creek near his home in New Jersey with a pair of binoculars. He'd try to match the songs birds sang to the beaks that sang them.

"So he was a self-taught," Ann Paul said. "He became a warbler expert sort of, by himself."

In high school and college, he worked in maintenance for a National Audubon Society camp in Maine, where he soaked up the expertise of ecological and environmental experts.

After earning a master's degree at Utah State University, Mr. Paul worked at the Colorado Rocky Mountain Biological Station, then studied penguins in Antarctica. In 1972, be began to work for Audubon, where he remained until his December 2003 retirement.

"The things he was interested and passionate about, he could also work on," his wife said. "So he was very lucky."

With a soft-spoken determination, Mr. Paul was the advocate for the avian population of Tampa, and he made it his mission to conserve their ecosystems throughout Hillsborough County.

He was a pioneer leader in the county's Environmental Lands Acquisition and Protection program, which set aside tax funds to protect thousands of acres of environmentally valuable land. It fell to him to persuade voters to adopt the program, which was one of the first of its kind in the country.

"It was critical that somebody like him was a part of the process," said longtime Hillsborough County Commissioner Jan Platt, another early of the program's leader. "He could relate to laymen as well as scientists about the environmental impacts of what was being proposed. He was very plain-spoken, but he spoke from the heart."

The white crowned pigeons of the Bahamas also captured his heart. They were being hunted during breeding season, and there was real concern that the birds could be eliminated from the Bahamas.

Mr. Paul spoke to the hunters about this concern. As a result of his work, there is now a hunting season on white crowned pigeons.

"That's the discussion approach: What is it we all need to get to a common, better future?" his wife said. "That's the kind of thing he did here in Tampa also."

He was active in several avian conservation societies and the natural resources committee of the Agency on Bay Management. He also helped establish the Tampa Bay Estuary Program.

University of South Florida faculty researcher Scott Emery knew Mr. Paul for more than a decade, and called him "the best field ornithologist I've ever worked with and a good friend. ... His ability to identify birds both by sight and sound was superb, and he could do it quickly."

Most recently, Mr. Paul and Emery teamed up on a research project to quantify bird species' use of different sizes and types of lakes in Florida. It was a venture that introduced Mr. Paul to kayaking.

Some of the lakes they studied could be navigated only by kayak or canoe.

"(Paul) had canoed before so I told him to try the kayak," Emery said. "The first couple of times he went around the lake, he said "I don't know if I like this.' But by the end of the day, he fell in love with it and even bought his own kayak.

"He took it with him everywhere, and we used them on over 50 lakes," Emery said. They even used it on Lake Thonotosassa, which spans more than 800 acres with "alligators bigger than the kayak," Emery said with a chuckle.

"He was a levelheaded voice on environmental issues, not a radical, and he had a very reasonable approach always based on what was best for the environment and also what was doable," Emery said.

In addition to his wife, Ann, Mr. Paul is survived by a son, David Timothy Paul, of Tallahassee; a daughter, Laura Elizabeth Paul, of Belleville, Mich.; a brother, Douglas Paul, of Boston; a sister, Alice Runis of Denver; and his parents, George and Doris Paul, of Middlesex, N.J.

A memorial service will be held Nov. 29 at the Hillsborough River State Park. The time has not been determined. Stowers Funeral Home in Brandon is handling arrangements.

The family asks that memorial gifts be made to Audubon of Florida, 410 Ware Blvd., Suite 702, Tampa, FL 33619.

Mr. Paul was especially proud of his work to preserve and revive Cockroach Bay, one of the biggest restoration projects in Florida. He also studied the reddish egret and wrote the plan for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect it.

"He was devoted to the birds in our bay," Platt said. "The birds will miss him."

Times staff writer Amber Mobley contributed to this report.

[Last modified November 13, 2005, 03:00:43]