Josh Day
An Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania native who grew up hunting, fishing and exploring nature in the woods and creeks around his childhood home, Joshua Day knew early on that science of the natural world would be the field he would seek out as a career. He attended Pennsylvania State University, receiving his AS in wildlife technology in 2005 and his BS in wildlife and fisheries science in 2007.
In 2008, Josh moved to Maryland to marry his sweetheart, Elizabeth, and began looking for work in natural resources while pursuing his Master’s. He spied a job listing for a naturalist at Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area and did some research to find out more about the site.
What he discovered reminded Josh of summers he’d spent as an undergrad in 2004 and 2005, working for the Pennsylvania National Guard Wildlife Department at Fort Indiantown Gap. There, he experienced a landscape not influenced by modern agriculture (pesticides/herbicides/intensive cultivation) that maintained instead a wide diversity of native plant species, as well as fire-dependent ecosystems like tallgrass prairie and oak savannas. Piquing his curiosity was also the plants’ resilience and robust regrowth following the site’s frequent burning during prescribed burns and training exercises on the base. Josh quickly fell in love with this peculiar landscape and came to know its benefits, as well as its unfortunate demise across much of the eastern United States.
In 2009, Josh began working as a Patapsco Valley State Park naturalist at Soldiers Delight, where he could once again immerse himself in the prairie and savanna he had loved so much at "The Gap.” Shortly thereafter, he met Dr. R. Wayne Tyndall, at the time the Maryland state ecologist overseeing conservation of the Soldiers Delight habitat. When Dr. Tyndall offered Josh a position working with him on the site’s invasive species control project, Josh jumped at the chance to work with native grasslands he had so enjoyed learning about as an undergrad.
Josh soon discovered, to his immense delight, that Soldiers Delight was an even more rare and fascinating ecosystem than the site in Pennsylvania. He sought a way to ensure that others learned what a unique and important ecosystem Soldiers Delight was and how much it needed protection from encroaching invasive plant species and degradation from human and herbivore intrusion. Josh recognized the habitat’s value and was excited to have an opportunity to be part of the effort to conserve and protect it.
In 2011, Josh received his MS in secondary biology education from McDaniel College and began his teaching career. But for another decade, he continued to work summers as a certified herbicide applicator at Soldiers Delight, ferreting out and documenting locations of invasive plant species throughout the ecosystem and then working with Dr. Tyndall to keep their populations controlled with herbicides. In 2015, Josh assisted Dr. Tyndall with his “Shale Barrens” project, resulting in a paper authored by Dr. Tyndall titled “Restoration Results for a Maryland Shale Barren after Pignut Hickory Management and a Prescribed Burn,” Castanet 80(2), 77-94 (June 1, 2015).
Josh and Elizabeth have two sons, Jason, born in 2011, and Owen, born in 2015. Once the boys were old enough to join their parents in hunting, fishing, camping, sports, and other outdoor activities, Josh reluctantly gave up his summer job at Soldiers Delight. But he couldn’t pull himself away from the habitat completely. In 2022, no longer a summer employee of the Maryland of Department of Natural Resources, Josh was free to join the board of directors at Soldiers Delight Conservation, Inc. We eagerly accepted his membership.
Today, Josh teaches 6th, 7th and 8th grade science at Thurmont Middle School in northwestern Maryland. He and his family make frequent trips to their family cabin near the Pennsylvania “grand canyon” and enjoy quality beach time and fishing expeditions in Delaware. But no matter how busy he is with family and career, Josh still finds time to attend SDCI board meetings and volunteer with our outreach and education displays at public events, where he enjoys sharing his extensive knowledge of, and interest in, his beloved barrens.
