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Rita Dixon Is A Little Bit Batty
By Holly Endersby It was a blistering hot day at the Red River Wildlife Management area near Elk City when Boise based Rita Dixon walked in after a long day in the field searching for abandoned mines. After grabbing a glass of cold water and some food, Dixon gathered gear and checked her map for another nighttime session of bat tracking. Working for the Idaho Department of Fish and
Game as a non-game biologist means Dixon looks after the critters on public lands that walk, swim, crawl, or fly but which are not hunted. “I was born in Tennessee and both sides of my family were farmers,” she explains. “My brother and I spent a lot of time on our grandparents’ farms and we were outside all the time. I really think that’s why I chose the work I do today.” Dixon’s father was in the Air Force and then transferred to the Navy after Vietnam, which meant some moving, but with her grandparents’ farms as anchors, Rita did not feel displaced. One move in particular she enjoyed. “Dad was transferred to a base in Florida adjacent to what is now a black bear preserve but which we got to explore as kids,” she recalls. After finishing high school, Dixon went on
to complete her BA in Biology at the University of California, Riverside. It was then that the travel bug bit hard. “I worked at a fish camp in Alaska and also did a stint up there as a whitewater rafting guide. But then, I really branched out and traveled to Europe, Africa, Greece, and Scandinavia before I decided to focus my life.” Like the trained scientist she was, Dixon says she sat down and thought about all the things that were important to her and what she could do with that interest. “I realized the thing I loved most was ornithology,” she says. “So I got an internship at the Manomet Bird Observatory on Cape Cod to find out if I really did want to be an ornithologist.” That experience was followed by an internship with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Arizona and finally a position with the U.S. Forest Service in LaGrande, Oregon where for three years she focused on woodpecker and owl research. That experience led her to enroll in a Master’s degree program in Ecology at the University of Idaho, with a focus on white-headed woodpeckers. This past summer she finished her PhD in Natural Resources at the University of Idaho. “I was hired by IDFG in May of 2000,” she says. “I started in the (Continued on page 25)