Episode 14 - Conservation Compliance Officer

Today we have Nathan Hartshorne, a Conservation Compliance Officer. We learn about the value of Money, the Good's and the Bad's, and more!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello! Welcome to the Career for Kids podcast with kids learning perioders. This is Maxwell

(00:09):
Valencia. And this is Henry Morrison. And today we have Nathan Hardshorn, conservation
compliance officer. Hello Mr. Hartshorne. Hi, nice to meet you guys. Thank you so much for
spending your time to be on Career for Kids. We have a great interview now. Let's get started!

(00:34):
So tell us what you currently do right now. So as you said, I am the conservation compliance
officer for the town of Westport. It is actually a pretty dynamic job.
Of all town hall officials, I probably interact the most with the public. This is for two reasons.

(00:56):
One of the biggest chunks of my job, probably the biggest chunk of my job, is when somebody has
wetlands or a stream, something like that on their property, and they want to get a pool,
they want to get a addition, or they're even just building a whole new house, they need to get
permits. So they have to go to the health department if they're on septic to make sure they're not

(01:18):
going to damage their septic system, then they would come to me and make sure that the impact
to the wetlands water course is determined by our conservation commission to be low. And typically
that's done with setbacks or buffer planting, so pools shouldn't be more than 35 feet from a wetland

(01:39):
line. And so I review all of those permits, I go out to the houses and I look at it, say
there's extenuating circumstances or oh things aren't as bad as they seem,
or why are these trees cut down, something. And so I do probably 160 permits a year,

(02:03):
anything from a generator to a new house. The other main aspect of my job is enforcement,
and that's when people mess up. And that's the toughest part, because nobody likes being told
they messed up. So I might be on one person's property looking at where they want to build a

(02:27):
swimming pool, but then I see their neighbor, maybe they chop down their pool, and they're like,
maybe they chop down one tree, or maybe they chop down 20 trees, and they're all protected trees
because they're in the wetlands. And trees are very valuable to the wetlands, so that means I have to
get them to replace all those trees. And it is difficult. Like I said, people do not want to be

(02:52):
told they did anything wrong, and they certainly don't want to spend money to fix it. Removing 20
trees might have cost them $50,000. Wow, that's a lot of money for some trees, but I know trees,
as you said, are just important to the environment and the wetlands.
Right. So you start to develop a sense of how to talk with these people.

(03:26):
Some, oh, I'm going to go fix that, I'm going to go find some trees. Sometimes they will fight
tooth to nail. But you try to work with them whichever type they are, because getting them
to do it fixes the problem. If they don't do it, that doesn't fix the problem, and trying to make

(03:48):
them do it is a very difficult and laborious process. So that is why I say I sometimes meet
the most people. I'm doing all these permits, I go do site visits, people in other departments
don't do site visits, and then I also have to do all the compliance. And then the newest part of
my job this year has been looking for vernal pools, which are like ponds, but they dry up in the

(04:11):
summer. So they don't have fish there, or good habitat for a lot of breeding waterfowl for
amphibians like frogs and salamanders. And so they're their own class of wetlands, and we've
never really defined them in Westport. So I've been to probably 200 this spring, but I can't

(04:33):
just go on people's property. So if it's town property, I can go. If I have a permit, I can go.
But others have to knock on their door and say, hey, can I go look at your wetland? And sometimes
they're like, definitely not. Most of the time they're totally cool, they're really interested,
and they want to hear if I found anything. And I'll come tell them about the frogs or tadpoles I
found, if I found any. So that's sort of the essence of my job. Like I said, it's very difficult,

(05:00):
but meeting all the people can also be a lot of fun. And I think that's a different question,
actually, that you have later. I understand. So how did you get to this position? I mean,
I know you said that this was like, out of all of the town hall officials, this is probably
the one where you most socialize the most and enjoy meeting the public, as you said,

(05:28):
like you have enjoyed. But how did you just get into the whole town hall kind of thing?
There's all these jobs out there. Why did you choose this one?
It's not something I would have expected. It's not something that crossed my mind. I often say
one problem I had growing up is that my dad is a professor. My mom was a school teacher. So I had

(05:51):
teachers as both my parents. My stepmom is also a professor. My brother is a professor. I didn't
have a good background in the variety of jobs that are out there, and I wanted a totally different
career. Not only are my dad's stepmom and older brother professors, they're all professors of
psychology. So yeah, town hall is definitely not something I'd ever thought of. And honestly,
I was unemployed. I was working at some random job early in COVID, and COVID hit, the whole field

(06:19):
crashed. So I was unemployed and then just looking and I found some website that was like Connecticut,
I think it was Connecticut Association of Wattland Scientists, and they had like career openings.
And so I saw a couple and I applied and that's literally how I got it. There was no real

(06:42):
like intention to go into town hall work. It was just that I found a job and it fit me because
environmental and I studied at Wattland's in school and got the job. Here I am three years,
two months later. Congrats. So you went from being unemployed to not having a job you enjoy.

(07:09):
That's kind of awesome. Yeah. That's pretty rare actually. There's like this study and only
eight percent of people get to pursue their dream job. Is that your dream job? No. I don't say it's
not my dream job. I do like the job. Parts of it I do hate. I mean it is a job. It is work.

(07:34):
Like I said, it's very difficult because I'm like a cop but without the authority of a cop.
So sometimes people, I meet, most of the people I meet are great people. Some of the people I meet
are terrible people and people will lie about me. They will call like Jen Tooker, the first

(07:55):
select woman, say oh he rang my doorbell a thousand times. No I didn't. I ring it once.
You know but like just weird stuff that like couldn't possibly happen. So it can be very
frustrating and I'm pretty sure if you guys, I think you guys did interview a cop. At least
done it and he would probably say similar things where like sometimes no matter how nice you are

(08:18):
some people will be really mean and that is frustrating especially when the focus of my job
is just to help the environment and I do get to do a lot of that. But my dream job would probably be
creating parks. That is when I came up with this idea when I was five years old. I thought hey what

(08:42):
if we just spent money to buy land and create parks. As it turns out there's organizations that
do that. The local one for Westport is the Aspetuck Land Trust. I don't know how active they are in
creating new ones but they have they have various parks. They're owned by the Aspetuck Land Trust.
They're not owned by the city or the state. Sometimes they manage city land but they're a

(09:04):
private organization that's a non-profit that creates land for wildlife and for like hiking
on trails. And so that's a little bit closer to my dream job but it's difficult to do. It tends to
pay very very very little and the whole field is the field of environmental work is tough because

(09:31):
there's not enough jobs really to go around and people tend to stick for a long time.
So like in my office my boss has been there for 20 years and there was another woman who'd been
there for 35 when I started. She only just retired half ago. So there's only three positions and two
of them had been held for 17 years when I first started the job which means there's not a lot of

(09:55):
turnover. You know if somebody wants a job they might get the other job out of the three but
there's not three jobs. So you don't always get exactly what you're looking for but if you can
get at least close that's cool. Yeah so can you dive a little deeper into that and like what part

(10:17):
of your job do you enjoy the most and I know you said this but don't really like like other than
like the people. Yeah so the part I like the most is that sometimes I can really get through to
someone they're really receptive. One of the big focuses that we have is getting people to plant

(10:39):
American plants and even better they can plant only New England plants and that is because they're
part of the local ecosystem. It's because the local butterflies need those plants and what happens is
you go to like Europe and they might plant American plants and they don't help the local
ecosystem here and when we plant European plants they don't help the local ecosystem here

(11:03):
and it's worldwide. It's one of the worst plants in Japan is a plant that I planted in my native
garden at town hall because it's great here but it's terrible in Japan. So sometimes I talk to
people about this and they get really excited and they go nuts with it. They'll go to the

(11:24):
native nursery they'll buy 50 native plants which is not cheap you know they might have spent
and they plant all these wildflowers that are specific just to Connecticut and then the birds,
the bumblebees, the butterflies and moss everybody just absolutely loves it and really makes their

(11:44):
property much more ecologically friendly than just some lawn and so those are the big ones. I've had
a few wins like that. I've had some people who were like doing it a little bit and I got them to do
more and yeah so that happens and there are other people like I said who you know part of the

(12:05):
problem is when people have violations rarely do people intend to cause a problem. We're just
living our lives and like oh we just thought we'd chop down those trees and they're not really
thinking about it. Rarely do people do with malice sometimes they just want lawn which is useless but

(12:26):
that's the image we're given that oh a house should have this big lawn but then when I tell
them they can't in these areas then they get sometimes like I said I relate and say very
mean things about me which is very frustrating but I try like I said you try your best to be understanding

(12:46):
and because I again I don't like when people tell me I did something wrong
but if you I tell them look there's there's a path forward we can work with you there's certain
things I can't back off on I can't say yes you can turn New Orleans into a lawn and add dirt and
rocks and whatever but I'm not you know I almost never issue a fine it happens sometimes

(13:11):
because you're gonna have to spend money to fix the problem so I say why what's a fine I'm gonna do
but it is difficult I'm not an aggressive person maybe they should have hired somebody who's an
aggressive person but I'm much more of a collaborative work with people person some people just are not

(13:32):
set up that and they don't work well with me yeah I can kind of write that in some ways yeah
so um was all right I know this wasn't a dream job but did you ever imagine yourself doing this

(13:54):
or something like this
is definitely I saw myself doing environmental work um I didn't know that this kind of job existed
so I couldn't have imagined myself doing this um I imagined myself there there were like two phases
my first phase was I thought to be a farmer I grew up in suburban Kansas but it's it's a lot like

(14:20):
westboard just suburbia and but I always wanted to be a farmer I love growing stuff I love being
outside um and then I decided that wasn't for me for various reasons um and I thought I'd be I'd
work for like a national park um whether it's you know maintaining trails or doing restoration work
um all the stuff that parks need um I thought that'd be really fun the problem is living in

(14:43):
this area there's not many you know big parks if you drive north of New York City you can get to
some um state parks but there's just not that many and so so like I said it's not a job that
I would have known existed but it is good that it exists I don't know if I really emphasized the

(15:03):
point earlier um a lot of my job it's not to really prohibit people from doing work it's to
make the impact of their work less damaging than it would be otherwise so you still get your pool
it's just it can't be anywhere you might imagine it to be on property okay sometimes you have to

(15:24):
make it a little bit smaller sometimes you have to be a little bit closer to the house
it doesn't typically end up being much of a problem there are certain properties in
town that just can't get our pool they're just you know they're surrounded by swamp you just can't
put a pool in but generally speaking it's about making the impact lasting smart development so

(15:46):
so I think that's a little bit more thorough than I need to be
so when you were young who was like your main idol does that have to be related to like natural
parks and stuff but it can just be like an idol like my dad he's like an engineer but his idol was
Michael Jordan or something like that I never really had an idol and by never really I definitely

(16:09):
never had an idol um it's not that I don't admire aspects of people but I think that
but I think you know if you get too infatuated with someone you're always going to be disappointed
but there are aspects of many people out there that are worth idolizing
well I was looking at that question earlier I was thinking a lot about it and

(16:33):
you know when I was your age Bill Clinton was president and you know they put a statue of him
in Kosovo because he helped stop the genocide in Kosovo and that's a really admirable trait
and he didn't actually go fight and he sent troops but but they love him for that and that
is very admirable but if you look into Bill Clinton he had also a lot of flaws and so

(16:56):
you know if you were to idolize him you might be very disappointed so that's always been my
belief ever since I was a little kid that I wouldn't I just never idolized anybody but there
were aspects of many people that I thought were worth emulating so Henry what's your question

(17:20):
why like actually this is kind of a repeat oh never mind so what was the biggest highlight
of your career sorry say that again what was the biggest highlight of your career
the biggest highlight of my career might be sort of from a previous job but also not so there was

(17:43):
a previous job where I did wetlands restoration where my boss and I would go out we would you
know I'd carry 11 foot fence posts through a swamp on each shoulder we dig holes we put the posts
and we make a big deer fence to keep the deer out and we'd fill it with it might just be a
we'd fill it with it might just be like an old dilapidated farm field we'd fill it with

(18:08):
American plants you know trees shrubs flowers and they don't have to maintain it for years and so I
worked that job for a couple years unfortunately they got a friend of my boss's hired who earned
a lot less money than me and then one day they're like okay we're going to save money and get rid of
you which is the lesson that you never want to kill yourself for a job for a company because

(18:32):
companies will cut you to save a buck but I went back to one of those places that I worked on for
a couple years and it was great and then it was it was 80% because of my work at that place
and it was really great like the you could just hear all the the birds and the bees the frogs

(18:54):
everything was just going nuts and it had been just sort of a rundown dilapidated farm just a
couple fields bought by the state or county I don't remember that were just filled with grass
and invasive species and you know we just really restored it and it's now a thriving well

(19:18):
that's pretty cool so what are the biggest challenges that you think can be solved by our
generation that really wants to solve them there are great opportunities one difficult and one easy
I mean they're both they're both difficult to do or to get done but one is easy to actually do so

(19:39):
the the first one that's extra hard is suburban sprawl suburban sprawl is is taking over like
crazy and like I said I'm from suburban Kansas City and it you know my my high school was surrounded
by fields and forests now it's surrounded by houses and office buildings and you have to drive

(20:03):
for like 40 minutes to get to the fields and typically it's not very smart development
and like Westport does not have smart development it just has houses you know
if you if you really think about it and people generally don't New York City is a much more

(20:24):
environmental place than Westport or and I'm not picking on Westport but like any sort of suburban
area because if you take the population of New York City and the population of Montana you essentially
could take the entire population of Montana remove all the humans and put them in just like Staten
Island and then leave all of Montana for wildlife so like that sort of sprawl is actually really bad

(20:50):
for the environment because you need extra roads to get to the people you need extra sewer lines to
get to the people because we're all spread out and so trying to inhibit that is very difficult
because we have a growing population you know we we have not that high of a birth rate but it's
still high enough that it's more than you know how many of us die and then also we have a lot

(21:15):
of immigrants which which is great I'm related to many immigrants but it's just increasing our
population so we need to find places for people to live and then when we sprawl out it is difficult
on wildlife and there are there are places in Westport where I know
owls live and there are places in Westport where I know owls used to live but now there's a house

(21:36):
because they cleared all the trees and put in the house and they cleared all the trees so that's one
of the biggest challenges and that's why you know land trusts do a lot of their work is to say okay
yeah we're having this sprawl but we can still buy some of this land and set outside at least some of
the area for wildlife it's still not enough and it's very expensive when people are doing it by

(22:00):
donation the other thing that's that is difficult to get done but would be easy to do is that if you
look in your gardens that that your parents have maybe even you have very likely none of the plants
are going to be American and again that's it's just as part of the ecosystem so plants produce

(22:25):
chemicals that make themselves inedible as humans we can eat a lot of different plants were one of
the reasons we took over we can do that most animals can't most caterpillars need specific
plants and if you don't have caterpillars obviously don't have butterflies also if you don't have
caterpillars you don't have birds because most baby birds eat caterpillars as babies right and

(22:47):
so if you don't have American plants you don't have the caterpillars you don't have baby birds
you don't have butterflies you don't have moths and it would be so easy to just buy only American
the problem is you go to Home Depot you go to Lowe's you go to Walmart you go to almost any
nursery around and almost everything they have is going to be European, East Asian, and sometimes

(23:10):
African and all their plants are great for their ecosystems and the American plants are terrible
for their ecosystems it's just that the the American animals are evolved for the American
plants European animals are evolved for European plants and so on and so forth and if we just got
everybody to plant only American even though we have suburban sprawl their gardens are going to

(23:33):
be full of wildlife so there are nurseries that focus on American plants very few there's there's
one in Fairfield a native plant nursery I think it's a native plant nursery dot com I went there
and bought a plant there myself most of my natives I grow I grow I have like 500 pots of natives and
I give them away for free you kids want some you know send me an email I give them away for free

(23:56):
just to help get people to plant American plants and that is definitely again it'd be easy you're
gonna have a garden well put in American plants it's just that people don't know a lot of my job
really is about educating people and people don't know about this or they know a little bit about

(24:19):
it but we're really not enough they don't understand how important it is because they've never really
done the math if you look at every single garden around you realize every single garden has only
non-American plants you start doing the math there's a lot of European Asian African plants
in Connecticut and they're beautiful they're often very beautiful and I would love to go to

(24:40):
those countries or those continents and see the plants there it's just ends up being detrimental
to our wildlife and if we're going to have sprawl we need our garden South American plants so that
is a big challenge you guys can definitely do it I'm gonna keep working on it too though
um if someone wants to follow in your footsteps in your career what would you tell him or her

(25:04):
so when I was a much younger man they basically said you then and this wasn't true anymore but
they said you know you graduate from from college you get an internship somewhere and then they'll
hire you that was no longer the case though but it used to be the case you you get an internship
they hire you you know you start your career there through that internship now if you get an

(25:27):
internship somewhere they're like thank you for your your cheap labor or even free labor
tell us how you do you know and then and then you have to go um
so it's a lot harder to get jobs and I sort of referenced that earlier um turnovers very low
there's not really enough jobs um in this field and so the other the other side of that is

(25:51):
experience matters more than education I have a master's degree from an ivy league school
I had three majors and undergrad nobody ever really cared about me I had a degree in
undergrad nobody ever really cared about that they cared what was my experience what's my
knowledge base from doing actual work and and there's good reasons for that um you know a lot
of my job I didn't learn in school um I didn't know about the permitting process in school and

(26:17):
nobody does um now I'm very familiar if I was to apply for another job and say oh how familiar
with like the government permitting I'd say well in westport I'm quite knowledgeable um so now I
mean this this was even 10 years ago I was talking with some people in undergrad oh my
ex-girlfriend's little sister was in my field in undergrad and they all knew they needed an

(26:39):
internship every single summer so wasn't you graduate get an internship get a job no you're
a freshman in in college get internship that summer you're a sophomore get internship that's
the summer junior get an internship now we have high school interns we have high school interns
in town hall um usually seniors I think sometimes juniors you know when you guys make it that far

(27:02):
there's a lot of neat internships out there if they're not long they're only like two weeks but
experience is the thing that matters the most um so you need as many internships as you can get
and then also when you graduate take any job you can get when I first had my master's degree I was
like well you know I got this master's degree maybe I don't need to take the three-month job

(27:24):
that is pure labor turns out I should have I didn't take it but I ended up doing it you know later on
um it's just they they want the experience so you need to keep doing internships and no job is
honestly no job is is too low of a job you got to do them all

(27:46):
okay so out of your entire life what is your main advice for kids listening to this podcast
just like generally sorry um say that again so out of your entire life what is your main life
advice for kids listening to this podcast like in general you know you won't like this answer um I

(28:09):
think it's probably more honest than the other ones you would get but these days you gotta earn
money yeah you gotta earn money it's so expensive the house that I grew up in is now five times what
it costs when I when when when my mom got it um I earned twice what my mom earned but I don't earn
five times as much it's very hard to earn five times as much um not I'm not that old um it's

(28:36):
it's part because I mean there's there's everybody's trying to squeeze every dollar they can so
you know cars got really expensive the car company say what's inflation but it's not actually
inflation because they're making huge profits they are the inflation they're just charging more
um car parts they're just saying that they're more expensive um I held on to my car as long as I could
but eventually I had to buy a new one it's old it's used um and and my income I think is fine

(29:01):
you know I don't I don't complain oh Westport should pay me more um but I definitely can't
afford to live in Westport I can't afford to live anywhere close um and and it's only getting worse
the prices are of everything is just going astronomical and again like I said it's because
everybody's trying to squeeze every dollar they can um all the Airbnb all the houses for rent the

(29:23):
apartments for rent the condos for rent that increases demand which increases the price
technically you know I don't blame a single person who has a second home that they rent the second
home but it does make it more expensive for everybody else they are by definition owning
a home they can't even live in which is seems like kind of a waste um there are good reasons

(29:44):
to rent sometimes but but it makes everything expensive so um honestly I would have gone for a
career where I would have made more money I could have done finance I'm great at math um and
yeah me too I could have uh earned a lot of money and then I could have bought some land I could
have bought a forest and just protected that whole forest and just said um whereas now I have to

(30:05):
really work hard to save money in order to rent an apartment and that is sorry sorry continue
okay yeah it's just so so it's very important so honestly because money's so dominant and because
things are getting so more so expensive and because my house is five times more expensive

(30:28):
than when I was your age which is not that long ago it's like you really just need the money so
I would recommend it doesn't have to be finance um engineering um you can make a lot of money
um there's a lot of business stuff you can do just it's you know honestly four year degrees
you only have master's degrees like I did you just get your four year degree you go on the right

(30:53):
business and and you can make good money it's not necessarily as rewarding as my career but if you
have that much money you can do rewarding things with it um you can donate to a land trust you can
donate to soup kitchens you can volunteer your time which is even more rewarding um and and do
and and do stuff with that money that actually helps um and so so the job itself might be a pain

(31:21):
but you can do so much good that that you'll still enjoy you'll say well here at work I'm not doing
the good thing but really because of the money I'm earning I just saved bald eagle habitat in
Connecticut thank you um so much for allowing us to interview you and to whoever is listening