Richard Anderson

 

Heavy equipment operator, horse wrangler, fishing guide, dog trainer, construction foreman, contractor, fundraiser, lobbyist. Any one of these terms could have been aptly applied to Dick Anderson at different times in his career. For thousands of Minnesota hunters, however, Dick was the face of Minnesota’s nationally acclaimed Advanced Hunter Education Program for over a quarter of a century.

His preparation for that role included a lifetime of hunting, President of the Fergus Falls Fish and Game Club, President of the Minnesota State Archery Association, helping to restore the giant Canada goose to Minnesota, finding funding to study crop depredation by Canada geese, and conducting environmental education workshops.

When the pilot Advanced Hunter Education Program was launched in 1976 Dick was one of the first to enlist as a volunteer instructor. When the program began to falter, he hit the road with a series of one-night clinics on deer, bear, and waterfowl hunting. Dick wasn’t some ivory tower lecturer. He was one of them. He shared hunting experiences with knowledge, enthusiasm, and an infectious brand of humor all of his own. Program attendance jumped from a few hundred to more than 3,000 in two years.

In 1979, the DNR hired Dick full-time to organize, train, and support a cadre of volunteer instructors whose love of hunting would be channeled into clinics and classes across the state. The philosophy of the program reflected Dick’s personal values of sharing the best information, provoking open discussions on hunter behavior and values, and providing hands-on activities to improve skills.

Dick spent time in the field with conservation officers, wildlife managers, and wildlife researchers to glean the most up to date information to share with instructors and participants. An annual instructor rendezvous’ was established share information, learn new skills, coordinate team teaching of classes, and build camaraderie. He applied his experiences as a life-long volunteer to insure that instructors received the support they needed and participants the results they deserved.

This approach was never more evident than in Dick’s work with waterfowl hunters. During the controversy over lead poisoning and lead shot bans, many agencies adopted a command and defend approach that fueled resentment. Dick fostered partnerships with Bill Stevens at Federal Cartridge (2011 Hall of Fame inductee) and the Minnesota Waterfowl Association to provide hunters with the best available information and provide open forums for questions and discussion through special clinics. Hunters heard about the dire effects of lead poisoning, but they also learned about shot shell ballistics, range estimation, and shooting techniques. Outdoor clinics provided hunters the opportunity to pattern their personal shotguns with free nontoxic ammunition at known ranges. They learned how to properly evaluate those patterns for waterfowl hunting.

By the time nontoxic shot was required nationwide for waterfowl hunting in 1987, the controversy in Minnesota was largely over. Minnesota hunters had ready access to the best information, techniques, and products in the country. And as an added bonus they learned waterfowl identification, habitat conservation, decoy setting, and dog training. At the center of this success was a unique hunter who devoted his remarkable talents to move all of us to a higher level of appreciation of waterfowl and waterfowl hunting. 

 

William Bryson

 

In March 1970, Bill and Arlene Bryson's marsh was just coming back to life after a long, cold winter. Unlike many other farmers at that time, Bryson was not draining wetlands to raise more crops. So when Freeborn County proposed to run a road through his marsh, Bryson put his big old boot down and said, "No way."

After Bryson refused to agree to the road plan, the county summoned him to district court in 1971. The county wanted to compel Bryson to obey an order of eminent domain to condemn portions of his marsh for its new road. Bryson responded with a countersuit under the new Minnesota Environmental Rights Act.

The case eventually ended up in the Minnesota Supreme Court, which reversed the district court. In part, the judgment said:

To some of our citizens a swamp or marshland is physically unattractive, an inconvenience to cross by foot and an obstacle to road construction or improvement. To one who is willing to risk wet feet to walk through it, a marsh frequently contains a springy soft moss, vegetation of many varieties, and wildlife not normally seen on higher ground. It is quiet and peaceful—the most ancient of cathedrals—antedating the oldest of manmade structures. More than that, it acts as nature's sponge, holding heavy moisture to prevent flooding during heavy rainfalls and slowly releasing the moisture and maintaining the water tables during dry cycles. In short, marshes and swamps are something to preserve and protect.

When a judge in the lawsuit came to see the slough, Bryson suspected divine intervention because the judge found it covered with migrating waterfowl. "That was great timing on the part of the ducks," Bryson chuckled.

Bryson's court victory was a monumental legal precedent and an inspiration for the budding environmental rights movement 40 years ago. It helped push through the

Minnesota Environmental Rights Act. Bryson's wetland court victory left several important conservation legacies. "Bill Bryson really drew attention to the idea that there are private landowners who wanted to protect wetlands and, quite often, were not allowed to do so, even on their own land," said Ray Norrgard, former Minnesota Waterfowl Association Director.

Bryson's five-year legal battle drew a lot of media coverage and brought attention to wetlands. That public awareness helped create a statewide Public Waters Inventory later in the 1970s.

The Bryson decision and the inventory helped lead to additional wetland protections with passage of the state Wetlands Conservation Act of 1987.

The Wildlife Lake Designation law also benefited from the Bryson case, with a 1974 expansion in the law's jurisdiction to include lakes in the northern two-thirds of Minnesota. And Bryson helped inspire the 1977 law that created the state waterfowl stamp, which generates dollars for waterfowl habitat by requiring waterfowl hunters to purchase the stamp.

While the legal victory was sweet, it is the habitat and wildlife legacy that really means something to this big-hearted farmer and his wife who decided they weren't going to be pushed around. For that courage, we honor Bill Bryson.

(Content courtesy of Mark Herwig)

 

Edward Crozier

 

Growing up in the southwestern Minnesota prairie town of Jasper, Ed Crozier hunted gophers and ducks, and trapped muskrats and mink. Crozier went on to earn a degree in wildlife management from South Dakota State University.

Crozier spent his career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But he may be best known for helping establish and then managing the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge. 

After serving in the U.S. Army in Germany, Crozier was assigned his first managerial post, in Cassville, Wis. Just 24, Crozier managed the Upper Mississippi River Wildlife and Fish Refuge. Over his career, Crozier managed four wildlife refuges and visited many others as head of a wildlife refuge planning team from 1965 to 1980.

When headquartered at Fort Snelling, Crozier drove daily across the old Cedar Avenue bridge over the Minnesota River.

“There were beautiful marshes on both sides of the road, beautiful wetland areas,” Crozier said. “At the time, there was quite a bit of floodplain development. I thought those areas should be protected. One of the ways was to create a national wildlife refuge — so I developed a proposal to do that.”

He envisioned a refuge stretching from Fort Snelling to Jordan. Crozier found citizen allies in Elaine Mellott, a member of the Bloomington Natural Resources Commission, and Maria Seal, another environmental activist from Bloomington.

“Together, mostly the three of us, we went up and down the river giving presentations to whoever would listen,” Crozier said. Crozier marshaled sufficient support to impress Minnesota’s congressional delegation, including then-Sen. Walter Mondale. “When we had enough, when Mondale could see we had enough support, he introduced it and got it passed in the Congress (in 1976),” Crozier said.

Originally named the Lower Minnesota River Wildlife Recreation Area, the refuge is unique in the constellation of federal land preserves. It’s one of about six national wildlife refuges located in an urban area, Crozier said, and one of a few formed by congressional action.

“There are access points in Bloomington, Burnsville, Savage, Shakopee — all up and down the river there are public access points that didn’t exist prior to the refuge,” which now extends west to Belle Plaine, Crozier said.

After retiring as manager, he helped form Friends of the Minnesota Valley and was president of the Minnesota Valley Trust, which bought additional refuge land with money used to mitigate the environmental effects of a new airport runway.

The man who lobbied to protect Minnesota River valley marshlands in the 1970s continued his environmental activism in retirement. He also wrote a book, Dream Hunter: A National Wildlife Refuge Manager’s Memoir, published by WingSpan Press.

“It’s a great sense of satisfaction every time I drive across that Cedar Avenue bridge that I was part of those wetlands' preservation and management,” Crozier said.

For all these accomplishments in the name of ducks and wildlife, we honor Ed Crozier.

Robert Hartkopf

 

Bob Hartkopf is a retired high school science teacher and a lifetime ecologist and environmental activist. Growing up on his family’s farm near Appleton, Minnesota in Swift County, Hartkopf read the works of ecologists such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson. Inspired by their ideas, Hartkopf became a one-man activist group and an early voice for wetland restoration in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest.

Though he lived and taught school in Fargo, Hartkopf noticed drastic environmental changes during his visits to the family farm in Swift County. The ducks had disappeared. Canada geese no longer nested in the tall grasses around the marsh. The tall grass was gone, burned off to make room for more farmland.

Hartkopf decided this tragedy needed to be recorded, so he created Cry of the Marsh, a short documentary film that, though only 12 minutes long, presents a startling testimony to how modern farming methods, left unchecked, can devastate wildlife and plant life … especially on the prairie and around wetlands, some of our richest ecosystems.

Cry of the Marsh was released in April 1970 to coincide with the first Earth Day. After the premier, and over the decades since, Hartkopf has traveled extensively to show his film and talk about the need to restore a balance between farming and wildlife needs in the rural landscape.

Wetland restoration affects all Minnesotans. Wetlands provide natural controls against flooding; they filter our water table; and they host a wide range of animal life that combines to ensure the healthy order of our ecosystem. In the days after Hurricane Katrina, experts said wetlands could have provided better flood control than levees.

State drainage laws have combined with state and federal policies, to cause wetlands to all but disappear from Minnesota’s landscape, especially in our magnificent western prairie counties. While these laws and policies enabled an abundant food supply for people – and most recently corn for ethanol production – they also wreaked havoc on Minnesota’s wildlife and ecological health. Without wetlands, farm chemicals and other nitrates wash into our rivers every day, depleting the water of oxygen and other healthful elements.

These are the types of messages, and battles, that Bob Hartkopf has carried and fought for the ducks, all wildlife, and for the sportsmen and women of our state.

The federal government has instituted buy-back programs to restore wetlands, but older drainage laws prevent them from having full impact. Perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate those laws. Hartkopf’s work reminds us that we can find a healthy balance for our land use, that we can restore and strengthen our ecosystem, and that working for environmental change is possible. For all that, the MWA honors Bob Hartkopf.

 

Pell Johnson

                                          

"How many times have I heard the lament at a gathering of hunters, 'Someone should collect hunting stories from the old guys before they are gone.' Too many times? I did begin to give some thought to the idea  … All too often these conversations are rarely recorded, thus a small moment of history is lost forever."

So says Pell Johnson in the introduction to his book, Fowl Stories.

It is clear that Swan Lake has a special place in the heart of this St. Peter author and conservationist. He shares the history and real-life stories of those who love and remember Swan Lake in Fowl Stories: The Adventures of Waterfowlers on Swan Lake, A Prairie Jewel, Nicollet County, Minnesota.

His connection to Swan Lake, a large water body located north of Nicollet in Nicollet County, began when he was young. The first experience he recalled at Swan Lake began in 1941 after his mother had remarried.

He said that his father, who was a newspaper man in St. Peter, died when he was only three years old. But Johnson' stepfather was an ardent hunter and conservationist. “We went out to Swan and shot pheasants," said Johnson.

In 1942 his family was able to get a cabin on Nelson's Point. While he was growing up, they would spend time on the lake. After marrying his wife Teresa in 1969, the couple would take their children out to enjoy the lake.

"We went out there regularly," said Johnson, "People who use the lake ... it has a mystique all its own. I have strong, strong feelings about the lake. It's beautiful."

The Johnson family has tried to preserve their cabin on Swan Lake as an original duck shack the way it was built in 1920. With encouragement from his wife, he decided to begin writing about the time he was retiring from his job as a civil engineer from Bolton & Menk for 53 years.

The writing project began by getting down the history of Swan Lake.

"I decided that's dead history," said Johnson, "During the course of my career I would often hear old stories from the older fellows. And then, I'd hear locally from the Nicollet Conservation Club we should interview these old guys and get their stories. When I looked in the mirror, then I decided, 'Cripes! I'm one of those old guys!"

He decided to would write his own story of Swan Lake along with the stories told by anyone else who had something to tell. His book is a collection of history, horror, happiness, humor, tragedy, suspense and some nonsense.

Creating his book turned out to be "pretty much a family affair," Johnson said.  His wife Teresa helped with the book, as well as his daughter who wrote a poem in the book called "Death of a Duck Hunter." His son edited the book.

Johnson not only wrote the stories about Swan Lake, he also took photographs that appear in the book. It is a true labor of love.

For preserving the elusive history of one of Minnesota's premier waterfowling lakes, the Minnesota Waterfowl Association honors Pell Johnson.

 

James Killen

 

 

"My career as an artist has brought so many wonderful people and opportunities into my life, and I am forever grateful to God for that gift!” says wildlife artist Jim Killen.”'I love what I do and hope my paintings capture a cherished memory or bring a sense of joy to those who view them."

Minnesota's own Jim Killen is a master artist whose career has spanned over forty years. He has developed a large and fiercely loyal following. His art cuts to the heart of the outdoor experience and will endure for as long as people treasure their dogs, gamebirds and waterfowl … and the unspoiled places that bring them all together. 

As a dedicated conservationist and avid sportsman, Jim merges his passion for the outdoors into every facet of his life. His affection for canine spirit and loyalty is readily seen in the intimate dog portraits that have earned Jim the reputation as one of the great dog artists in the world. 

Jim also brings his commitment and experience to wildlife and conservation organizations with his remarkable gift of painting.

Ducks Unlimited has honored Jim three times as their "International Artist of the Year," and named him one of the "All-Star Artists" for Ducks Unlimited 75th Anniversary celebration in 2012. The distinctive style and quality of Jim`s art has generated millions of dollars for various conservation groups.

 

Here are some of his honors:

2012 International Ducks Unlimited "All-Star Artist" for the 75th Anniversary Art Program

Minnesota Pheasant Habitat Stamp

Has won over 16 State Duck Stamp competitions

2005 - Featured Artist Pheasants Forever "Pheasant Fest"

2004 - National Wild Turkey Federation Artist of the Year

2003 - International Ducks Unlimited Artist of the Year

1999 Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award - Minnesota State University, Mankato, MN

1997 - "Target 2000" National Wild Turkey - A Four Year Series

U.S. Art Hall of Fame Inductee

Received the Thomas Jefferson Award for Community Service from the American Institute in Washington, DC

1993 - International Ducks Unlimited International Artist of the Year

Quail Unlimited Stamp

1987 - National Wild Turkey Stamp

Southeastern Wildlife Expo Artist of the Year

1985 Minnesota Pheasant Stamp

1984 - National Ducks Unlimited Artist of the Year

For bringing the outdoor experience to life via his art, the Minnesota Waterfowl Association honors Jim Killen.

William Webster

 

It began as one man's hobby. Now Wild Wings, one of the nation's leading publishers and distributors of wildlife and sporting art prints, is in its fifth decade of successful business.

Bill Webster, founder of Wild Wings, grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River, where his love of the river's bountiful wildlife inspired a hobby collecting federal duck stamps. Though he aspired to become a wildlife artist, like the stamp designers he revered, it was his passion for collecting that led to the birth of his company.

By the early 1960's, he had earned a reputation as a respected authority on duck stamps and had become friends with noted wildlife artists. 

The seed that was to become Wild Wings was planted while on a hunting trip with artist friends. They expressed their frustration with the lack of publishers who possessed the skill and knowledge to produce fine-quality art prints. With their encouragement, and Webster's sales and marketing experience, Wild Wings became a reality.

In 1970, Wild Wings published its first print, "Wintering Quail" by Owen Gromme; Webster then mailed a small brochure offering the print. The response exceeded Webster's greatest expectations. 

Initially, the company operated out of his home in Old Frontenac. His thought at the time, he recalls, was, "It would be a nice little family business."

From there the business quickly prospered, and in no time outgrew the basement of his home. 

In 1979, Wild Wings relocated to a new facility in Lake City, MN, from which it operates retail galleries across the country, as well as a thriving direct mail business. "We've come a long way from our initial mailing of 8,000," says Webster.

Webster's wife, Betty, encouraged him, and his seven children have since taken part in the business too. Today, Wild Wings is the nation's premier printer and seller of fine sporting art.

Webster and his business are credited with being an outlet for many of the best wildlife artists in the country, including Minnesota’s David Maass, who has won the federal duck stamp contest, the most prestigious accomplishment for a wildlife artist.

Webster never lost sight of his original passion for wildlife. He notes with pride that Wild Wings is still very committed to conservation, working closely with organizations such as Ducks Unlimited, National Wild Turkey Federation, Pheasants Forever, Ruffed Grouse Society, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Minnesota Waterfowl Association.

"It's the art of wildlife and the artists dedicated to creating it that I love," he says. "Very few people have the opportunity in their lifetime to do what they thoroughly enjoy. I can truly say that I have not had a waking moment when I have not enjoyed this business." 

Bill Webster helped bring the thrill of the marsh, and the waterfowl that thrive there, into our homes through art. For that, the Minnesota Waterfowl Association honors him.