Hey all. The photos posting through this weekend were placed before Shiloh's death. I'll try to remember to add some more during the4 week. I'll add a few nice ones of Shiloh too. Meanwhile, this was on the cover of the Portland Press Herald in Maine today.
Just can't wrap my mind around the deranged mess in Los Angeles! It's literally the only news story I've had the bandwidth to check on, and it's too scary not to keep an eye on. All this and thousands of tanks in DC for the military parade. ⁉️
Odd as it may seem, this doesn't strike me as truly extreme. I remember the Watts riots (I was in LA countty at the time). And the 1968 Democratic convention. And for that matter, the protests at the 2000 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, which I was covering as an online journalist. True, Trump has thrown himself into the mess for no other reason than to keep things stirred up, but it still doesn't sound any more extreme than what I have seen before.
I don't know what a tender does, but you guys sure got it sparkly clean. That was a really nice write-up about Shiloh. How wonderful to live a life that earns such respect and praise. I'm a little split in two (or three) because in addition to the horrible mess in CA, my last brother, the one two years younger than me, has terminal cancer and there was a bad go-round with it last night. A whole night in the ER and then some time in a room. They got him stable enough to let him go home tonight. I feel so, so sorry for my SIL. What a horrible strain she is under. They never had children and they live far out in the country, so she's bearing the majority of the burden alone. It just sucks all the way around. ~Susan
Oh, Susan, that is so harsh. I wonder if there are Meals on Wheels groups there or maybe a volunteer ride service? Here in Vermont we maintain "Front Porch Forum" which is a daily email by town, and folks can post anything from a lost dog to a need for help with something to a local concern to an item for sale. Then folks can respond either to the Forum or directly by email to the person who posted the item (if they choose to share their address). Something like that would be useful for your SIL to locate help with ANYTHING! Around here, people have mowed someone's lawn or shoveled their walkway while they are recovering from illness, loaned someone their hedge clippers, found a lost dog, etc. Maybe there's a local church group that would be willing to help out?
A tender is a rowboat or small boat that is used to ferry someone from land to their larger boat and back. It may also be used as a small fishing boat for a Sunday afternoon.
Shiloh Schulte, conservationist who helped American Oystercatchers rebound, died in the helicopter crash on June 4th, 2025, age 46
There are those whose lives accumulate significance slowly, the way sediment builds into shoreline. And then there are those whose devotion etches meaning into every year. Shiloh Schulte, a biologist who spent his life chasing birds across hemispheres, belonged to the latter group.
He died in the North Slope of Alaska when the helicopter he was using to reach a remote study site crashed. It was a risk he understood—perhaps even accepted—as part of the job. For Shiloh, conservation was never a desk-bound discipline. He was happiest prone in the mud, recording the heartbeat of a whimbrel, or wading through marshes at dawn, checking nests that might otherwise go unnoticed. He had a PhD, but also a practical gift rare among scientists: he could fix an outboard motor, survive an unplanned night on a windswept Arctic islet, and persuade dozens of stakeholders with competing interests to band together for the sake of a shorebird.
He was best known for his work on the American Oystercatcher. Once thought to be disappearing from the Eastern Seaboard, the species rebounded by 45% under his watch. He helped orchestrate that recovery through a mix of painstaking fieldwork, applied science, and relationship-building that earned him respect from fishermen, policymakers, and fellow scientists alike. Manomet Conservation Sciences, the Massachusetts-based nonprofit where he worked for over a decade, gave him the latitude to operate across borders and bureaucracies. He made the most of it.
Alaska held a special place in his imagination—it was where, at 18, he first ventured into the field, studying birds along the Colville River. A grizzly bear encounter, a fogbound night marooned in the Arctic Ocean, even a black widow spider in a canoe: these were not just war stories. They were formative. What might have deterred others became, for him, proof that nature was worth the trouble.
He was not just a field scientist. Shiloh served on the Select Board of Kennebunk, Maine, where he lived with his wife and two daughters. He was the kind of neighbor who shoveled your driveway before you asked, and the kind of leader who listened more than he spoke. He held a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and ran marathons with the same quiet grit he brought to everything else.
It is difficult to measure a life like his in ordinary terms. The oystercatchers that now call the Atlantic coast home again are a living metric. So are the colleagues who say they stayed in conservation because he made the work feel possible—and the students who will one day read his papers without ever knowing the man who wrote them could also tie a perfect bird band in a gale.
ℹ️ More on Shiloh https://lnkd.in/gZ5-Ab_H (cut and paste) Rhett Ayers Butler Rhett Ayers Butler is an Influencer Founder and CEO of Mongabay, a nonprofit organization that delivers news and inspiration from Nature's frontline via a global network of reporters.
Hey all. The photos posting through this weekend were placed before Shiloh's death. I'll try to remember to add some more during the4 week. I'll add a few nice ones of Shiloh too. Meanwhile, this was on the cover of the Portland Press Herald in Maine today.
ReplyDeleteTop story, right under the newpaper title!
Just can't wrap my mind around the deranged mess in Los Angeles! It's literally the only news story I've had the bandwidth to check on, and it's too scary not to keep an eye on. All this and thousands of tanks in DC for the military parade. ⁉️
ReplyDeleteOdd as it may seem, this doesn't strike me as truly extreme. I remember the Watts riots (I was in LA countty at the time). And the 1968 Democratic convention. And for that matter, the protests at the 2000 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, which I was covering as an online journalist. True, Trump has thrown himself into the mess for no other reason than to keep things stirred up, but it still doesn't sound any more extreme than what I have seen before.
DeleteIt doesn't even begin to compare to the 1967 Detroit "Riot," which happened when I was in college.
Delete----Alan
I don't know what a tender does, but you guys sure got it sparkly clean. That was a really nice write-up about Shiloh. How wonderful to live a life that earns such respect and praise.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little split in two (or three) because in addition to the horrible mess in CA, my last brother, the one two years younger than me, has terminal cancer and there was a bad go-round with it last night. A whole night in the ER and then some time in a room. They got him stable enough to let him go home tonight. I feel so, so sorry for my SIL. What a horrible strain she is under. They never had children and they live far out in the country, so she's bearing the majority of the burden alone. It just sucks all the way around. ~Susan
My sympathies to you, your brother, and your SIL.
DeleteWhat W said.
Delete----Alan
Oh, Susan, that is so harsh. I wonder if there are Meals on Wheels groups there or maybe a volunteer ride service? Here in Vermont we maintain "Front Porch Forum" which is a daily email by town, and folks can post anything from a lost dog to a need for help with something to a local concern to an item for sale. Then folks can respond either to the Forum or directly by email to the person who posted the item (if they choose to share their address). Something like that would be useful for your SIL to locate help with ANYTHING! Around here, people have mowed someone's lawn or shoveled their walkway while they are recovering from illness, loaned someone their hedge clippers, found a lost dog, etc. Maybe there's a local church group that would be willing to help out?
DeleteA tender is a rowboat or small boat that is used to ferry someone from land to their larger boat and back. It may also be used as a small fishing boat for a Sunday afternoon.
DeleteRhett Ayers Butler’s Post on LinkedIn...
ReplyDeleteShiloh Schulte, conservationist who helped American Oystercatchers rebound, died in the helicopter crash on June 4th, 2025, age 46
There are those whose lives accumulate significance slowly, the way sediment builds into shoreline. And then there are those whose devotion etches meaning into every year. Shiloh Schulte, a biologist who spent his life chasing birds across hemispheres, belonged to the latter group.
He died in the North Slope of Alaska when the helicopter he was using to reach a remote study site crashed. It was a risk he understood—perhaps even accepted—as part of the job. For Shiloh, conservation was never a desk-bound discipline. He was happiest prone in the mud, recording the heartbeat of a whimbrel, or wading through marshes at dawn, checking nests that might otherwise go unnoticed. He had a PhD, but also a practical gift rare among scientists: he could fix an outboard motor, survive an unplanned night on a windswept Arctic islet, and persuade dozens of stakeholders with competing interests to band together for the sake of a shorebird.
He was best known for his work on the American Oystercatcher. Once thought to be disappearing from the Eastern Seaboard, the species rebounded by 45% under his watch. He helped orchestrate that recovery through a mix of painstaking fieldwork, applied science, and relationship-building that earned him respect from fishermen, policymakers, and fellow scientists alike. Manomet Conservation Sciences, the Massachusetts-based nonprofit where he worked for over a decade, gave him the latitude to operate across borders and bureaucracies. He made the most of it.
Alaska held a special place in his imagination—it was where, at 18, he first ventured into the field, studying birds along the Colville River. A grizzly bear encounter, a fogbound night marooned in the Arctic Ocean, even a black widow spider in a canoe: these were not just war stories. They were formative. What might have deterred others became, for him, proof that nature was worth the trouble.
He was not just a field scientist. Shiloh served on the Select Board of Kennebunk, Maine, where he lived with his wife and two daughters. He was the kind of neighbor who shoveled your driveway before you asked, and the kind of leader who listened more than he spoke. He held a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and ran marathons with the same quiet grit he brought to everything else.
It is difficult to measure a life like his in ordinary terms. The oystercatchers that now call the Atlantic coast home again are a living metric. So are the colleagues who say they stayed in conservation because he made the work feel possible—and the students who will one day read his papers without ever knowing the man who wrote them could also tie a perfect bird band in a gale.
ℹ️ More on Shiloh https://lnkd.in/gZ5-Ab_H (cut and paste)
Rhett Ayers Butler Rhett Ayers Butler is an Influencer
Founder and CEO of Mongabay, a nonprofit organization that delivers news and inspiration from Nature's frontline via a global network of reporters.
Great article.
Delete