Thomas Reed ’19 Preserves Wake County Open Spaces

Stewarding local natural resources is an extremely important duty, one that College of Natural Resources alumnus Thomas Reed ‘19 oversees every day as the manager of Wake County’s three nature preserves and nearly 10,000 acres of conservation land.

Reed’s passion for natural resource management is an outpouring of his early love for “creepy crawlies.”

He said, “Ever since I was a kid, I always had kind of this love for the unloved, so things that people typically consider creepy crawlies — the insects, reptiles, amphibians, arachnids, kind of all the stuff that people tend not to like. I’m not really sure what drew me towards them, but I’ve always just really enjoyed them. I think they just don’t get the appreciation that they deserve.”

Growing up, Reed spent a lot of time volunteering for local science museums and the local zoo that focused on reptile and amphibian education. Once he entered high school, he started to learn more about wildlife programs. 

From a Passion for Animals to a Passion for Land

When he originally enrolled at NC State, Reed intended to major in zoology. But once he started taking classes in the College of Natural Resources, he discovered that his heart was more focused on the natural world, the great outdoors. 

As an undergraduate, Reed majored in fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology and was heavily involved with the Herpetology Club at NC State. 

“I was there from day one as a freshman, and then I ended up moving into being their vice president as well as their president,” Reed said. “So that was a pretty big part of my life on campus.”

Reed was no stranger to gaining knowledge and skills through hands-on learning opportunities. During his time at NC State, he worked two different jobs for the Department of Applied Ecology. 

At the first job, Reed was a field technician, monitoring adult butterflies during flight periods, maintaining and restoring their habitat and captive rearing eggs to adults. He also assisted with studies on butterfly behavior, plant demography and vegetation surveys. 

For his second job, Reed worked as a research technician, where he assisted in lab maintenance and organization and collected data on native bees and wasps around the Triangle region. He also assisted in research projects on measuring bee stress levels, rare plant pollinators and carpenter bee monitoring.

u0022If there’s not people to follow, then the field suffers.”

One experience Reed thoroughly enjoyed was sharing his love for animals during field excursions in FW 373: Vertebrate Natural History.

“When I was a student, I was able to take out some of the other students to go look for salamanders and do some surveys,” he said. “I showed them some of the cool salamanders in the area and their breeding behavior, some of the eggs, nesting sites and things like that, and just educated them on those different animals.”

Today, Reed regularly returns to NC State to lead FW 373 students on similar excursions and he works with many other courses in the college and assists undergraduates with some of their research projects.

During the excursions, Reed usually demonstrates different trapping efforts, from turtle trapping to salamander trapping. He also shows the proper ways to set the traps and teaches about the ethics of different survey techniques.

“One of the biggest things is just trying to stay busy, stay involved, really network with different organizations or different groups,” Reed said. “Typically, people really want to help students grow, get into the field and make sure that they’re well trained and passionate, because if there’s not people to follow, then the field suffers.”

Finding His Love for Land Conservation

It was during his sophomore year that Reed first worked for Wake County as a temporary employee. Several students in the college work in temporary, part-time park aid positions for the county’s Open Space program. Currently, Reed oversees a team of about seven students, many of whom use their roles as internship credits. 

The Open Space program oversees the management of Robertson Millpond Preserve, Sandy Pines Preserve and Turnipseed Nature Preserve. In addition, it oversees more than 150 properties across the county, totaling just shy of 10,000 acres of land.

The program’s primary goal is to protect natural land that has not been converted to residential or commercial development. This includes forests, greenways, parks, meadows, wetlands, floodplains and farms.

Reed and his team work to safeguard the land in a variety of ways, ranging from the protection of water quality and the management of resource production to the preservation of historical and cultural properties. 

“The nature preserves are very much for allowing for people to get out and build that connection with the natural world around them, and providing for people to have that access and be able to get outside,” Reed said.

He added, “The rest of our land is managed for conservation purposes, rare species management, the protection of habitats, farmland or forestry aspects, and providing wildlife corridors and habitat connections. Some of these lands may become future nature preserves or parks.”

Helping Protect Wake County’s Natural Resources

Wake County Open Space also provides funding and support to some of the local municipalities to purchase and develop some of their own open spaces, parks and greenway systems. According to Reed, the overarching goal is to protect 30% of Wake County as open space land.

On his job, every day is different for Reed. “One of great things with the Open Space program is we don’t have a typical day,” he said. “A lot of what we’re doing on a day-to-day basis is, first and foremost, going to those preserves, making sure everything is where it needs to be and safe so that it can be enjoyed by the public.”

Visits to each property is a priority. Each year, Reed and his staff aim to conduct surveys, checking up on the properties and their boundaries.

This involves keeping track of rare or uncommon species, keeping a full inventory of known flora and fauna that are on the sites, as well as monitoring for signs of trespassing, encroachment problems and water quality. Throughout the year, remediation visits are crucial to addressing any problems Reed and his team might find on site.

“Wake County is one of the fastest growing counties in the country, and so it’s very, very quickly getting developed,” Reed said.

He added, “With this program, not only are we able to protect the land and keep it from being developed, but we’re also able to help people get outside. They’re able to go enjoy the outdoors and develop that passion for nature. We really need more people to like nature and appreciate it.”

Outside of Wake County Open Space, Reed’s main love in nature is reptiles and amphibians, and he is constantly involved with reptile and amphibian research. He is also really passionate about wetlands and wetland conservation, so he is heavily involved with the Carolina Wetlands Association and the North Carolina Herpetological Society.