2021 George B. Fell Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient
Like George Fell, Glenn is an originator of new concepts and conservation approaches, and his impact has been widely felt across the country as well as around the world. Glenn has been a lifelong advocate, researcher and facilitator of natural areas management and a pioneer in the field of forest ecology. He exemplifies the qualities of the Fell award to the highest degree. Glenn‘s exceptional career in research and advocacy advancing natural areas conservation has spanned 50 years. His efforts have had far-reaching, positive impacts on the protection and stewardship of natural areas.
Glenn‘s contributions have been both profound and prolific. Here are just a few highlights of his life‘s work:
As a first-year doctoral student at Oregon State, Glenn helped draft and then became the principal advocate for the Oregon Natural Area Preserves Act, which was passed in 1973 by the state legislature. He then served as the Oregon Natural Area Preserves Advisory Committee‘s first chairman. In this role, Glenn was responsible for nominating, documenting, and establishing Oregon‘s first natural area preserves on state-owned land - totaling thousands of acres.
Glenn has been one of the most effective and consequential voices for protecting old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. In 1978, he published Old Growth Forests: A Necessary Element of Multiple Use Sustained Yield National Forest Management in the journal Environmental Law. This analysis of the old-growth issue launched a complete reappraisal of forest management on public lands in the U.S., resulting in a major shift from the dominance of timber production toward specific goals and strategies to sustain older forest ecosystem services, biodiversity, and non-game wildlife.
Glenn collaborated with federal and state partners to create the first Research Natural Areas (RNAs) on national forests in Oregon. Then in Alaska, Glenn and his teams identified and proposed 80 RNAs encompassing over 570,000 acres. Remarkably, 44 of the 80 proposed RNAs are now established and the remaining 36 are still being actively considered.
Glenn has published many impactful articles and editorials in the Natural Areas Journal, including a forward-thinking call in 1987 for applying large-scale, ambitious restoration strategies titled: Restoring Natural Areas in the Human-dominated Landscape.
Glenn‘s long list of lifetime achievements includes international impacts on biodiversity conservation, as indicated by his influence on changing Forest Law in Sweden to include an environmental management goal in parallel to that country‘s long-standing objective of maintaining high wood production.
Glenn is one of only a few Lifetime Members of NAA. He‘s been a member since 1983 and has served on the NAA Board and as President. Glenn has attended dozens of Natural Areas Conferences over several decades. His excellent photographs are often used by NAA staff to document conference activities.
Glenn is a humble, passionate, innovative, tireless and dedicated researcher and conservationist. He has been an inspiration to his many students, colleagues and collaborators. He has accomplished an astounding amount of consequential work over his extensive career. For this, we are all indebted to him; and the natural world is better and better protected thanks to his efforts.
Congratulations to Ken McCarty
2021 Carl N. Becker Stewardship Award Recipient
For three and a half decades, Ken McCarty has directed natural areas stewardship for the state park system within the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Ken has been instrumental in the restoration, preservation and management of many of the 91 parks and historic sites throughout the state of Missouri.
Some of Ken‘s many achievements worthy of recognition are as follows:
Ken‘s impactful career with Missouri State Parks has spanned more than 35 years. During this time, he has been a champion of natural areas stewardship and guided management of 38 natural areas within the state park system.
He has served on the Missouri Natural Areas Committee for most of his career and as a Committee Chair since the early 2000s. Under Ken‘s chairmanship, 28 new natural areas have been added to the Missouri system – an addition of 30,665 acres.
Ken is highly respected as one of Missouri‘s best landscape ecologists and as an authority on the subject of landscape restoration. For Paul Nelson‘s seminal book, The Terrestrial Natural Communities of Missouri, he wrote Chapter 2 on Ecological Management.
Ken has initiated, facilitated and fulfilled natural resource projects throughout Missouri State Parks. Some have been complex and required a high degree of ecological understanding, scientific reasoning, fine-resolution engineering and extreme persistence. One example is the Big Oak Tree State Park project, where he has worked for over 25 years to restore a hydrological connection between a remnant 940-acre old-age bottomland forest and the Mississippi River.
Ken has a remarkable ability to relay scientific information and ecological understanding to nearly anyone. This has allowed him to gain support for numerous projects and convey to local communities the benefits of ecological restoration.
Ken has been the Missouri State Parks Fire Program Coordinator for more than 25 years and you still serve as Burn Boss for high complexity burn projects. He has initiated research and published reports on seasonal effects of burning in woodland and prairie systems. His ability to help others understand fire effects in various natural communities is unmatched.
Ken helped to initiate many of the first large-scale glade and woodland restoration projects in Missouri, and still provides guidance and oversight for such projects today.
Ken‘s broad set of skills and interests has led to many contributions to our understanding of natural history, including his work to survey the native bees of Missouri, which to date includes 7,192 collections as well as documentation of seasonal habitat use by various bee species.
Ken‘s nominator for this award – Christopher Crabtree with the Missouri DNR – captured the essence of Ken McCarty‘s career when he wrote the following: Ken has been one of the main driving forces of ecological management and stewardship within Missouri‘s state park system. He has initiated or played major roles in large-scale restoration efforts across Missouri. From upland prairie restorations to bottomland and wet prairie reconstructions; from savanna and open woodland thinning projects to the reclaiming of glades overrun with cedars; from reshaping altered hydrology of damaged riverine systems to working to restore flood pulses and water retention within 400-year old cypress swamps and bottomland hardwood forests – Ken has done it all.
Photo credit: Derek Montgomery Photography
JOIN US
Join the people who protect and manage our natural areas.
Photo credit: Derek Montgomery Photography