Raised in Southeast Washington, D.C., during the crack epidemic, Rodney Stotts, now 50, became involved in illegal activities as a young person. But that was another lifetime for Stotts. Now, he is a licensed master falconer — the highest level in the sport — and one of the few Black falconers in the country. Stotts is breaking boundaries by pursuing falconry, a predominantly white field, in order to help those around him.
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Approximately an hour’s drive from Washington, D.C., Stotts works with his birds in a former psychiatric hospital down the street from a juvenile detention facility. He joked that people mention they feel the spirits of former asylum patients when they visit his program, but he believes that as long as he keeps to himself, the spirits will do the same.
Stotts now runs Rodney’s Raptors, an organization that provides educational programs on raptors, a sanctuary for the birds, training in falconry and photo opportunities.
As he joked about the location, Stotts was keeping Raven calm by speaking to him in a hush but strict manner. Raven, a 7-year-old red tail hawk, stayed perched on Stotts’ hand and wildly flapped his wings every once in a while. For the average person, this is a frightening sight — but Stotts kept him under control with ease.
He cares for and trains three birds of prey at the institution-turned-sanctuary. They’re like family, and some are named for loved ones who have died. Stotts’ license allows him to trap new juvenile birds each year, releasing them when they reach maturity. While he loves the outdoors and prefers his birds to most people, his dedication to falconry as a profession comes from his commitment to local youths, so more young people may have the chance to work with the magnificent creatures. It was a giant Eurasian eagle owl, Mr. Hoots,, the first raptor to perch on Stotts’ arm more than 20 years ago, that changed his life. Mr. Hoots is unreleasable and is in Stotts’ care today.
Rodney Stotts, a licensed master falconer, holds Raven, a red tail hawk, at the bird sanctuary.Photo by Rodney Choice / Street Sense Media
While in his 20s, in and out of selling drugs, Stotts’ path to birds began with Earth Conservation Corps, where he took a job in order to have a legitimate pay stub when applying for an apartment. The group had just formed to clean up D.C.’s Anacostia River, mostly recruiting young workers from the Valley Green Community housing project.
The conservation work wasn’t limited to trash cleanup. Stotts helped care for injured birds and was a part of reintroducing bald eagles on the Anacostia, where they can be spotted today. His supervisor, the founder of Earth Conservation Corps, was a falconer and introduced Stotts to Mr. Hoots. Stotts was hooked and eventually led the raptor portion of the organization’s program, Wings over America, which assigns youth who have been arrested to care for injured birds of prey.
Growing up, Stotts had a natural connection to animals. He occasionally spent time at his grandmother’s home in rural Virginia, and it was filled with a variety of creatures.
“I knew I was always gonna end up working with some sort of animal. I had animals my whole life — white mice, tree frogs, crayfish, snapping turtles,” Stotts said.
Hollis Wright met Stotts while he was working with the Earth Conservation Corps. It was a life-changing experience for Wright, a 19-year old man at the time who described himself as a “youth on the fringe.”
“It was different. I remember not being really into it,” Wright said. “I’d grown up (as) an inner-city youth — you don’t really experience certain things. Usually, anything dealing with nature was outside-the-box thinking for me.”
Within a year, Wright graduated from the program and continued a lifelong friendship with Stotts. Wright considers Stotts as a family member, referring to him as his uncle.
“By the time I graduated, I saw where the passion came from,” Wright said. “After meeting Rodney and getting to know him and hearing some of his stories … it became apparent that it wasn’t fake. It was all genuine and pure with him.”
Wright’s experience at high school was “extremely different” than his time with the Earth Conservation Corps. A large influence was the connection he cultivated with Stotts during his time at the program.
“Having someone with a similar background, and having lived certain experiences, and still being able to be a person, to be open and honest and appreciative and loving and caring — it let me know that maybe the road I was on wasn’t the right one,” Wright said.
Ten years ago, Stotts began Rodney’s Raptors. The main motivation for this move was because Stotts felt limited by which groups of young people he interacted with.
“I started Rodney’s Raptors because the program that I worked for was for adjudicated youth,” Stotts said. “So you got 16- and 17-year-olds, never been locked up, and they wanted to learn this, they wanted to join. I had to tell them, ‘Go get locked up. Now come back.’ Which was the stupidest thing in the world.”
Throughout the decade that Rodney’s Raptors has been in existence, Stotts and his birds have interacted with hundreds of people across a variety of backgrounds.
The core of Stotts’ work is interacting with people, and social distancing measures have made his job difficult. Throughout the pandemic, Stotts has been able to do small outdoor events for birthday parties, but he has been unable to reach the same amount of people as he was reaching pre-pandemic.
Earlier this year, more than 100 people donated nearly $4,000 to a GoFundMe set up by one of Stotts’ supporters to help him purchase a laptop and recording equipment so he can continue his work virtually. He has obtained the equipment and is working on designing the best virtual education experience he can. Stotts said there is no substitute for the in-person experience with his birds, but he will be able to reach hundreds more people, both people isolating during the pandemic and opening up to young people across the country.
In the past year, Stotts and his story have received an enormous amount of attention, buoyed by a documentary of his life, “The Falconer,” directed by Annie Kaempfer. The film explores Stotts’ past and present while bringing attention to racial injustice and environmental racism. It was accepted into the Atlanta Film Festival. Today, Rodney’s Raptors continues to run entirely on donations.
Peter Tatian, a community development expert with the Urban Institute, attended one of Rodney’s programs in 2015.
“I was very impressed with Rodney and his commitment to — and passion about — these birds of prey that he was trying to educate people about,” Tatian said. He recalled the crowd’s enthusiasm and interest and spoke to the importance of role models originating within the community.
“Maybe for some people it would be surprising that there’s somebody like Rodney living in this community that has this interest,” Tatian said.
For his part, Stotts said in a 2015 interview with the GW Hatchet, George Washington University’s student newspaper, that being seen with his birds is enough of a shock to stop traffic, but not always in a positive way.
“I’ve had police officers pull me over, guns drawn, everything: ‘Get out of the car! Lay on the ground.’ Then they read one piece of paper that says, ‘U.S. Fish and Wildlife federally licensed falconer,’ and then it becomes ‘Oh my god, you do what?!’”
Tatian said amplifying community voices and changing those individual perceptions is crucial. Stotts is one of roughly 30 Black master falconers in the entire U.S. and overcame significant racism to succeed in his field, but he must still break stereotypes.
“I think that just shows sometimes we don’t all appreciate how much there are these assets in our communities and how there are many people who have a lot to offer, and we just need to give them more opportunities to share what they know and what they’re passionate about.”
Tatian said outside-the-box learning possibilities are significant because different people respond to different approaches to education.
“We need to engage with people not only in the classroom but outside in different ways, so that we can really help each person find something that really inspires them and can be a basis for them succeeding in school and in life going forward,” Tatian said.
For someone like Wright, who now has a family and works in law enforcement, Rodney inspired him to turn his life around and change for the better. They stay in touch and Wright helps Stotts out every once in a while.
Stotts compares the birds he cares for to the young people he works with — many of whom remind him of himself as a youth.
“If someone don’t step in and help them and guide them in a certain way, there’s only one or two options. You either end up in jail or dead,” Stotts said. “So the same way with the birds. … If a falconer didn’t step in and get that bird, catch them, (they might not survive),” Stotts said. The majority of young birds of prey do not make it through their first year of life. “Now, come spring time of the next year, (if a falconer cared for it), that bird got an 85-90% chance of survival and reproducing.”
Courtesy of Street Sense Media / INSP.ngo