Press Release

DWR Wildlife Biologist Ruth Boettcher is 2022 William T. Hesselton Memorial Award Recipient

Richmond, VA — The Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) announced that Ruth Boettcher, Coastal Wildlife Biologist for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, is the 2022 William T. Hesselton Memorial Award recipient. This award is presented by the Northeast Wildlife Administrators Association of the Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (NEAFWA) in recognition of excellence in conservation, research, monitoring, and management funded through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Wildlife Restoration grant program.  Ruth’s area of responsibility includes Virginia’s Eastern Shore, as well as the waters, shorelines, islands and major tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay.  Ruth is specifically responsible for a wide diversity of wildlife found in the region, including shorebirds, seabirds, colonial nesting birds, sea turtles, marine mammals.

While Ruth has realized many tremendous accomplishments during her tenure at DWR, perhaps her most recognized is her work to relocate Virginia’s largest seabird colony, displaced from its decades-old nesting site by the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel Expansion Project. This colony of more than 25,000 birds includes five Species of Greatest Conservation Need and a state-threatened species; two of the species nest nowhere else in the Commonwealth, and, for two other species, this location represents nearly half of all nesting effort in the state.

Ruth routinely works with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and The Nature Conservancy to survey and monitor the breeding success of the federally and state threatened Piping Plover, the state threatened Wilson’s Plover and the American Oystercatcher in the barrier island/saltmarsh complex seaward of the lower Delmarva Peninsula. She also helps coordinate and participates in Virginia’s coast-wide colonial waterbird breeding surveys and conducts annual seabird breeding surveys. Ruth has conducted research on the reproductive success of American Oystercatchers in the Chesapeake Bay, assessed the hatching success of wading birds on the Eastern Shore and has published and co-authored multiple peer-reviewed papers.

Ruth serves as the Virginia representative on the Atlantic Flyway Council’s (AFC) Nongame Migratory Bird Technical Section (NGTS) and is the co-chair of NGTS’s Waterbird Committee.  She is also a representative on the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture Technical Committee and is a member of the American Oystercatcher Working Group and the Black Rail Working Group.  Over the past five years, Ruth has been working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Atlantic Flyway Council and several Gulf Coast states to plan and coordinate the first large-scale, coordinated colonial waterbird breeding survey.

The Northeast Wildlife Administrators Association (NEWAA) has established an award to honor the memory of former New York state wildlife biologist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee, and charter NEWAA member Bill Hesselton. The award is presented annually at the Northeast Fish and Wildlife Conference to an individual from the northeast that has demonstrated initiative and made significant contributions that further the ideals of the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Program.

Please join DWR in congratulating Ruth and her dedication to conservation!