Conservation champions keep on winning
Influence of Nature Conservancy in Oklahoma grows acre-by-acre, heart-to-heart
As Oklahoma Nature Conservancy Director Mike Fuhr shook my hand on the Mayo Hotel ballroom stage in front of the annual Partners in Conservation luncheon, handed me a lovely award, and gestured toward the microphone, one thought overwhelmed others swirling in my brain.
“Why didn’t you prepare a speech? Bonehead!”
“Say something!”
A good friend and one of the best off-the-cuff public speakers I’ve ever known, former News-Miner publisher Maryiln Romano, once told me that people enjoy relevant personal stories and some humor if you can work it in, so I quickly turned to that mindset.
Then I blacked out for a few minutes while my mouth and brain danced a jig, and I guess it went OK. People seemed happy and were complimentary.
In consultation with my wife, DeAnna, I’ve recalled a few points made in that talk and thought they were worth repeating for my readers, perhaps in a more salient manner.
It is genuinely humbling to be recognized in front of a gathering of great people who support the Conservancy, especially when my wife, DeAnna, and I shared the front table with 2024 Conservation Champion Andie Jackson, representing her late husband, Bob, and their family, who recently completed the donation of their 12,345-acre Creek County ranch to the Conservancy. The Pearl Jackson Crosstimbers Preserve is named in honor of Bob’s grandmother.
Little ol’ me felt that one in my throat and that tender spot behind the eyes for a few seconds.
What am I doing here?
Among many early factors that led me to how I’ve made my living over the past 40 years was a chance meeting at the Isaac Walton League park just outside Ames, Iowa, in 1982. The late Olav Smedal, the longtime outdoor editor of the Ames Tribune, was there working on a column.
Back then, I only considered an “outdoor writer” in the context of my favorite outdoor magazine and book authors. But Ole’ shared his idea of the value of writing conservation stories for the daily newspaper, where those stories were timely, local, and might reach people who weren’t already looking for them.
That old Iowan was a silo breaker, far ahead of his time if you ask me.
Don’t hold my weak and possibly revisionist memory to the timeframe; as mentioned, many other factors came into play. Still, I’m reasonably sure that within a year, I’d changed majors from civil engineering (I wanted to be a cartographer) to journalism, joined the Outdoor Writers Association of America, and started what I believe was the first-ever outdoor column in the sports pages of the Iowa State Daily.
Some of my favorite compliments come from people who tell me up front they are not “outdoorsy,” don’t like bugs or getting dirty, or fishing, much less hunting. But they say they enjoy my stories and photos because they learn something, maybe get a feel for why some people like those things so much—and that those stories help them understand the fascination, the value of having wild spaces, and maybe they envision themselves out there one day—from the comfort and safety of their kitchen table or back porch.
Old Ole’ was right. I’ve heard it from folks at public meetings and grocery store aisles for years and more times than I can count.
Ole’ kept the Ames Tribune’s “Outdoor Page” rolling for 22 years by selling advertising for his page. I can’t imagine that ever happening at the Tulsa World, where my weekly outdoor page and job ended this month four years ago.
I honestly thought I was done back in 2020. I didn’t see many options. But my writing continues here on Substack, with hundreds of readers and tens of paid subscribers contributing to the “gas tank fund” and to justify my spending a few hours each month to create stories, photos, and videos.
I freelance for various publications, but I’m incredibly proud to write for the Oklahoma Ecology Project (OEP), a non-profit that funnels news and conservation writing to media outlets statewide. More than 70 print publications and some radio and television websites have used our content. Thanks to private donors, readers and viewers from Guymon to Antlers get conservation news local outlets can use free of charge.
I have dreams that the OEP will grow. Maybe we’ll be able to afford an intern so I can continue Ole’s legacy. That mission to keep conservation news in front of people who might not think to look for it is dear to me. God bless local journalism.
The Nature Conservancy, naturally
One astounding difference between Oklahoma and what I’d grown accustomed to living 23 years in Alaska is the easy access to thousands of wide-open acres (aside from the fact that most of it is roadless).
With more than 90 percent of Alaska owned by public entities, it offers more public wild spaces than the Lower 48 states combined. With more than 90 percent of its land in private holdings, Oklahoma is the opposite.
I’ve been lucky to know it doesn’t have to feel that way.
My good friend, hunting guide, and cowboy Jack Morris introduced me to Oklahoma’s wild spaces. This month, 16 years ago, he narrated days we spent surveying the landscape through the windshield of his pickup truck. As a practical matter, we were scouting for doves, waterfowl, and deer, but it was a crash course in this state’s natural and human history.
“We have to get you together with …” Was one of Jack’s most often repeated phrases.
Joe Williams, a family friend and former cohort of his father, Bo, was on the one-of-these-days list. However, the Williams Companies CEO and Chairman no longer lived in Oklahoma, and we didn’t meet until 2015 when the Tallgrass Preserve was renamed in his honor. Joe and Bo—those old quail hunters had them some good times they did.
Another was Harvey Payne, a friend who, along with Joe Williams and others, played a crucial role in the success of the grassroots effort to preserve 29,000 acres of tallgrass prairie, which is now the 40,000-acre Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and home to a herd of more than 2,000 bison.
Oklahomans stepped up where government processes failed. They raised over $15 million and worked through The Nature Conservancy to get things rolling.
A consummate communicator—and a walking encyclopedia of the Osage and all things of nature—Harvey ensured that Tulsa’s new outdoor writer experienced the Tallgrass bison herd “behind the scenes,” so to speak. He put me in a photo blind near a greater prairie chicken lek, where I felt the prairie’s pre-dawn springtime chill and absorbed the ancient ritual of their sunrise song and dance.
We watched the prairie burn and saw how it recovered. I met scientists who explained rotational grazing. He introduced me to University of Tulsa Professor Emeritus Kerry Sublette, and we dug further into the history of the place and the oil industry. We drilled right down into the wild and miraculous world of prairie soil microbes.
I shared loads of stories.
The Nature Conservancy’s inventory of owned and managed lands in Oklahoma has grown to 85,313 acres, with another 10,993 in conservation easements. In a recent column, Fuhr noted that the Conservancy’s new Flint Hills Initiative aims to conserve 210,000 additional acres of tallgrass prairie across Oklahoma and Kansas over the next seven years.
Again, through Jack, I got roped into joining the board of NatureWorks, another excellent conservation group. Most know them for the larger-than-life bronze wildlife monuments program and the Tulsa Herd, now growing off Yale Ave. However, the group also raises money for Oklahoma conservation projects through its annual Wildlife Art Show and Sale.
It’s another grassroots group that includes many of the same benefactors as The Nature Conservancy, Harvey Payne among them. John T. Nickel is another of NatureWork’s conservation champions.
John T. invited me to tour his Caney Creek Ranch, the 17,000-acre J.T. Nickel Family Nature & Wildlife Preserve, and share a shore lunch with his longtime friend, the late expert fly-fishing artist and author David Whitlock. What a magical day that was.
We drove the backroads, and he showed me the Ozark hill country through his eyes as if we were back in his younger days. In our minds, we were among those hills at a time long before Lake Tenkiller existed, but when a kid who had no idea what he would do for a living dreamed that he would own some of these lands one day.
On the ride home, I wondered aloud where, in this day and age, Oklahoma would find the Joe Williamses and J.T. Nickels of the future. John T. seemed optimistic.
“I suppose there are always opportunities, and people will come along,” he said.
Where, indeed?
Not long after I departed from the World, I spent a day with Mike Fuhr on the 3,598-acre Oka’ Yanahli Preserve, learning about habitat and water quality recovery projects at the Blue River.
The Nature Conservancy’s inventory of owned and managed lands in Oklahoma has grown to 85,313 acres, with another 10,993 in conservation easements. In a recent column, Fuhr noted that the Conservancy’s new Flint Hills Initiative aims to conserve 210,000 additional acres of tallgrass prairie across Oklahoma and Kansas over the next seven years.
And, of course, we shared that head table with Andie Jackson at the recent luncheon.
The recent widow said Bob Jackson started the work to turn his incredibly well-managed ranch into a preserve years earlier; even before that day, John T. and I toured those eastern Oklahoma backroads and pondered the future.
Andie Jackson said that Bob may have passed away before all the Is and Ts were dotted and crossed, but he knew the land was in good hands.
She humbly joked that her only significant contribution to the preservation effort was changing the ecoregion’s name from Cross Timbers to one word, Crosstimber, in the official title. She said she was worried that people might mistake the family matriarch’s name as Pearl Jackson Cross.
The Conservancy’s deference to the family’s wishes says something important about the people who made the new preserve a reality. Your average visitor to the preserve might consider that a minor detail, but it’s a significant change.
My arid sense of humor gets a kick out of thinking that writers and editors will forever struggle with Cross Timbers versus Crosstimbers, often with both usages in the same story. Heck, Tallgrass versus Tall Grass can even cause problems. I looked it up repeatedly when I was new to the area.
For the record, Tallgrass is one word for the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and the Tallgrass Prairie ecoregion. Cross Timbers is two words for the ecoregion, just one in the Pearl Jackson Crosstimbers Preserve.
Pearl Jackson’s legacy makes another indelible mark—in Oklahoma stylebooks.
Props to Andie Jackson for sharing a personal story with a bit of humor and relevance.
All those little stories about our lands and people, acre by acre, heart to heart, Herculean lifts, and small gestures add up to lasting impacts. It's definitely a winning formula.
Congratulations Kelly! So much deserved.
Well earned. When you told me you wanted to go to Alaska and be an outdoor writer I wondered how long that would last. A life time! It won’t hang on a wall. But my grandson holding a 90 year old’s hand in an ambulance in Seattle. Staring at his name tag. “You related to Kelly, we used to live in Fairbanks, loved his writing.”