Ever doubt the power of one person? Bob “Sea Otter” Jones has proven just how important a single person can be. He has single-handedly saved the Aleutian cackling goose.

The Aleutian cackling goose was once abundantly found in North America and Asia, but fur trappers in the 17th and 18th centuries all but eliminated the bird species. They relocated foxes to the birds’ nesting grounds to allow them to breed, but the foxes wreaked havoc on the geese, devouring their eggs, hunting their young, and even killing adults, who have long take-off times for flying. In 1940, researchers believed that the geese were extinct, but Bob “Sea Otter” Jones didn’t give up hope on the species.

By the time Sea Otter Jones began to work on eradicating foxes in the Aleutians, islands once green with guano-fertilized grass had turned brown. The fox had won and the cackling goose and many other island-nesting bird species had lost. But Jones was not convinced the goose was gone. He had seen many rare and strange things in his travels among the fog-draped islands. As he traveled, he searched for some sign of hope, a dove perhaps, or better yet a goose. And then it happened

Jones worked to remove all of the foxes from the islands where the geese once nested and chased down the few specimens he saw. After finding a family of 56 geese on one of the only fox-free islands, he began nursing the young and introducing them to other islands. Today, thanks to his work, there are tens of thousands of Aleutian cackling geese.

Picture via WikiCommons.