Through the efforts of one man working on his own time, two endangered songbirds sing a little stronger today. In 2002, Rick Norwood, a retired assistant director from the Texas Department of Transportation, began volunteering for The Nature Conservancy (TNC). He quickly became involved in a database development project between TNC and Fort Hood, the U.S. Army’s installation near Killeen, which collects endangered songbird monitoring data.

  Norwood devoted hundreds of hours to analyzing individual databases, some of which dated back to 1980. From these he created one all-encompassing program, called the Fort Hood Avian Management System, delivering the new version in 2005. He also used the same framework to develop another management database that organizes native-plant nursery information used by the conservancy’s Southmost Preserve. Key to this framework is that other entities, such as parks or conservation organizations, can adapt these database systems for use in collecting data for their own avian and vegetation monitoring efforts.

  The hard work paid off. Today, significant populations of the endangered Black-capped Vireo and Golden-cheeked Warbler are found at Fort Hood. Monitoring, management, and research of the Army installation’s population play a substantial role in the recovery of these two species. The Fort Hood Avian Management System facilitates the analysis of collected data, and Norwood continues to refine the program he first developed. The Nature Conservancy estimates that Norwood’s volunteer work has saved the organization many hundreds of thousands in the cost of developing this important tool for monitoring and research.

  Norwood’s database project promises to have a lasting and a significant impact on conservation efforts in future endeavors.