Team Rubicon volunteer veterans help out at Turnbull wildlife refuge

Members of Team Rubicon, which deploys to natural disasters around the world, spent part of Saturday working at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge.

Marine veteran Jeff Simpson signed up for the three-day heavy equipment operations class through Team Rubicon, an organization of mostly military veterans. He used to do construction work before becoming a helicopter crew chief for five years.

“This is a lot different than that,” he said, referring to his time in the military. “I like working on construction sites.”

Team Rubicon members at Turnbull were working to become certified heavy equipment operators.

Simpson, who spent most of his life in Marysville, Washington, joined Team Rubicon six months ago. He said he never deployed overseas while he was in the Marines and was eager for a chance to help people.

“It was definitely something that drove me to this organization,” he said.

Team Rubicon was founded by two former Marines as a way to match the skills of military veterans to disaster relief. The 42,000 volunteers respond to floods, hurricanes and tornadoes, mostly doing debris cleanup, said Team Rubicon national heavy equipment coordinator David Venables.

Their crews can tear down damaged buildings and move debris to the curb so it can be removed, Venables said. Using heavy equipment for that task is a “force multiplier,” he said. “It allows us to get more done.”

The group partners with Case Construction Equipment to get heavy equipment delivered from the nearest dealer to wherever it is needed.

The program is designed to help veterans who have sometimes struggled to reintegrate into society, Venables said.

“They lose that sense of purpose, the mission, that sense of community you can only find in the military,” he said. “Disasters are our business. Veterans are our passion.”

Team Rubicon formed a partnership with U.S. Fish and Wildlife a year ago. The agreement allows Team Rubicon to offer heavy equipment operator classes on wildlife refuges. In exchange, the operators in training will complete needed projects on the refuges.

Steve Fox, the engineering equipment operator at Turnbull, had several small and large projects lined up for the weekend. A small water holding area was created near his shop so it wouldn’t flood in the spring, and a gravel road leading to a wetland was repaired.

But the big project for the weekend was to remove man-made islands that had been created in some of the wetlands. They were put in decades ago with the idea that the islands would create habitat for birds that was protected from predators, Fox said. But studies showed the islands had little impact and they are slowly being removed.

“We’ve been working on it for years,” he said. “There’s a lot of islands.”

Normally such wetlands work can only be done in the winter when everything is frozen, but recent drought has dried up some wetlands.

“We can go in and do minimal damage,” Fox said.

He was pleased that the partnership with Team Rubicon meant he could get two wetland areas restored to their natural state in a single weekend.

“This is great,” he said. “We’re definitely gaining something by having them in here.”