Phil Unitt has been curator of birds and small mammals at the San Diego Natural History Museum (The Nat) for nearly four decades. On Saturday, he retires, but he leaves an impressive legacy.
Overseeing The NAT’s birds and small mammals collection, Unitt works primarily with specimens. But when I meet him out in the field hiking through Los Peñasquitos Canyon, he is in his element.
"This is one of the canyons that we're studying at the museum for our Healthy Canyons Project, trying to understand the effects of urbanization on native plants and animals, and how that has changed over really all of recorded history," Unitt explained. "So understanding how our environment has changed just makes you very intimate with all the forces that degrade our environment and that call for conservation. Each time a species goes extinct or, say, is extricated from California or San Diego County, it's impossible or almost impossible to go back. So how far we can push, who can answer that? That is an experiment that we run. And if we fail, then there's no going back.”
Talk to Unitt for any length of time and you realize that he’s endlessly curious and always asking questions. As we walk, he ponders island biogeography.
“Our expectation in island biogeography is that as the natural habitat gets cut into smaller and smaller patches that species will disappear, that smaller areas won't be able to support so many individuals, and then that will lead to not being able to support so many species,” Unitt said. “But that's hypothesis. How does it actually play out in real life? We're discovering that some species are adapting, and that's changed just in my lifetime.”
Unitt sees each of the 52,000 birds and 26,000 small mammals in The Nat’s collection as having a story begging to be explored.
“The whole point is not just to have, but is to use them to understand the natural world around us,” Unitt said.
Specimens from the past can be vital to science in the future.
“Whatever we may preserve specimens for now, future generations are going to come up with uses that we can't even imagine,” Unitt said. “We have thousands of specimens collected before DNA was even understood. But now, just through a little sliver of skin, DNA can be extracted out of an old specimen, and that specimen can provide value that its original collector couldn't have imagined.”
Unitt could not have imagined a 37-year career as The Nat’s curator of birds and small mammals. But he credits his mom for planting the seed.
“My mother, when she was a little girl, she lived in Descanso in absolute poverty during the Depression,” Unitt explained. “But she said she had no idea she was in poverty. She had the mountains and the river as her boundless playground. She always exposed my brother and me to nature through hiking and camping trips. I took up an interest in birds because they were accessible. You could see them and hear them without a microscope or identify them without having to use expensive instrumentation.”
That led him to become a frequent visitor to the museum as a child. He later studied ornithology at San Diego State University, which led to work at The Nat in 1988. He then became the full-time collection manager.
“So this collection, as you might imagine for an organization that's 150 years old, is steeped in history,” Unitt said. “I was reading the older literature on the birds of California, and it was seeping into me how things had changed and what it took for that change to be recorded and understood. And for me to be a part of observing that change, understanding that change, and perhaps shaping that change was huge motivation.”
That became a unifying theme of his career. Another theme quickly emerged as he was drawn to particular species in the collection.
“Can I show you a little gray bird? I confess, I get most excited over little drab birds,” Unitt said with great delight.
Take the gray vireo whose numbers have been changing.
“Now the question is, why are they doing so well in Mexico and so poorly in the U. S.?” Unitt posed. “We don't have the answer to that question, but that's the next step in trying to understand the ecology of the gray vireo. Of course, the question is, oh, it's just another little gray bird. But it's not the bird's responsibility to make themselves easy for us to identify and exciting for us to look at.”
So while others study more flamboyant and charismatic creatures, Unitt has looked elsewhere to find important stories.
“I've always likened myself to a mouse in a herd of elephants,” Unitt said. “And how are the mice going to survive this herd of elephants? And looking for the hiding places of science where other people may not be going.”
But even with The Nat’s extensive collection and long history of study, Unitt concludes, “Once you really get into the thick of it, then you realize that still so many questions are unanswered.”
And Unitt will never stop asking questions and seeking answers. As he pulls out specimens from The Nat’s collection, including tiny bird vertebrae delicately strung together like a bracelet, he explained: “Insofar as it's physically possible, every bone gets a catalog number on it. These are bird bones that came out of PVC pipes that had been used to mark mine claims in the Mojave Desert. The birds went into those pipes and got stuck. So what birds are susceptible to this mortality? And how can it be averted?”
Unitt was able to identify what birds were dying in the pipes by comparing the bones to those already in the collection.
“Then to have it used like this for something that could benefit bird conservation is very gratifying,” Unitt said.
Unitt is proud of the collection and how it can prove useful beyond the museum. Taking out the bones of a small porpoise, he explained, “The animal, even if it goes extinct, the skeleton is not only preserved here, but preserved digitally so that the entire world can use and understand it.”
Preparing those specimens — whether cleaning bones or doing taxidermy — has been a key part of his job.
“One thing that's very important to me is that we maintain the skills to prepare these specimens because it's an art form that's not easy to master,” Unitt said. “One thing that's been very gratifying through my career is that all of our science staff has maintained a commitment to the value of the collection and the use of the collection and the use of the collections in understanding environmental change.”
That has been a unifying theme of his career, which will close a chapter on Saturday when Unitt retires from The Nat. But he says he won’t be missing anything.
“Because I'm not going anywhere,” Unitt stated firmly. ”My commitment to the museum and the collection continues through my life and beyond my lifetime, really.”
Indeed, the specimens Unitt has preserved during his tenure as curator will be used by generations to come up in ways that no one can yet imagine. And that’s an amazing legacy.
