Honored Puxico conservationist addresses national convention

A Puxico area man who was awarded America’s most prestigious wildlife conservation honor was the keynote speaker at the recent joint convention of The Wildlife Society and the American Fisheries Society.

Dr. Leigh Fredrickson, a renowned wetland ecologist and retired University of Missouri professor, received the coveted Aldo Leopold Memorial Award. That honor earned Fredrickson the keynoter slot at the recent annual convention in Reno, Nevada.

Fredrickson, 81, the long-time director of the Gaylord Memorial Wildlife Laboratory on the Duck Creek Conservation Area north of Puxico, focused his remarks on the importance of biologists “seeing the big picture” and being aware of the total environment around them even though they may be concentrating on one particular site or species. Gaylord Laboratory was a joint venture of the University of Missouri-Columbia and the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Dr. Fredrickson, winner of the coveted Aldo Leopold Memorial Award, addresses attendees as the keynote speaker at the recent national joint convention of The Wildlife Society and the American Fisheries Society in Reno, Nev.Photo provided

“Hard work and patience, while focusing on the total environment on an annual basis,” will produce the greatest results, Fredrickson said.

The convention, attended by more than 4,000 of the nation’s wildlife and fisheries biologists, was the first joint meeting of the two major organizations.

Famed biologist Aldo Leopold, namesake of Fredrickson’s award, is considered to be the “father” of modern, science-based wildlife conservation. His son, Starker Leopold, was a key figure in developing Missouri’s landmark Design for Conservation plan, which was implemented by the Missouri Department of Conservation after the state’s citizens adopted the one-eighth-cent conservation sales tax in the 1970s.

Fredrickson with a female hooded merganser, one of his favorite waterfowl species, after he checked the clutch of eggs she laid in a nest box in the Mingo Swamp near Puxico.Photo provided

Fredrickson, a native of Sioux City, Iowa, earned undergraduate, master’s and doctoral degrees from Iowa State University.

“I had wonderful outdoor mentors as a child growing up in modest circumstances in rural Iowa,” Fredrickson told the hundreds of conservation professionals attending his lecture. “Those folks included my parents, other older relatives, neighbors and family friends, who turned me on to the natural world.

“I continued to come in contact with great mentors in college and after I began my professional career at Gaylord Lab,” Fredrickson said.

During his tenure as director of the research facility (1967-2002) , Fredrickson taught and mentored nearly 80 graduate student research projects that resulted in nearly 300 scientific publications on wetland and waterfowl science.

The lab, which was closed by the University for budgetary reasons in 2007 after Fredrickson’s retirement, was a major training ground for wetland professionals. Many of those people rose to high-level positions in state and federal agencies, universities and private conservation organizations such as Ducks Unlimited. The list of former graduate students and associates trained by Fredrickson reads like a Who’s Who among today’s professional waterfowl and wetland managers. Many of his students are themselves now retired.

Considered one of North America’s leading authorities on wetland management, Fredrickson’s work has taken him to more than 300 national wildlife refuges in all 50 states and several foreign countries, literally from the Arctic to Antarctica.

Known among some of his closest friends as “the blue collar scientist,” the conservationist told the Reno convention audience that “the refuge employee who drives the heavy equipment on the land, or the old-timer who has hunted and fished the area all his life often are as knowledgeable as the area managers. Pay attention to what those people can tell you.

“I was especially fortunate to have been mentored by the best of the best during my college and early professional experiences. To receive the Aldo Leopold Award is a wonderful capstone to my life-long efforts to recognize and promote the importance of all intellects involved in land management, from the individuals who run the machinery and manipulate water control structures all the way up the chain to the top professionals in state and federal agencies.”

Notable among the research accomplishments emanating from Gaylord Lab were advances in “moist soil” management, where native plants and accompanying invertebrates provide waterfowl food; proper management of flooded bottomland hardwood trees on areas called “green tree reservoirs;” breeding ecology of native, cavity-nesting wood ducks and hooded mergansers; and wintering nutrition and habitat for waterfowl.

Over his career, Fredrickson traveled widely to inspect wetlands in different ecosystems on both private, state and federal lands, encountering “the very best and very worst land managers” along the way.

“I learned the repercussions about being bluntly honest about management. I was barred from one (multi-state) U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service region for a decade and occasionally from individual refuges for being honest when my patience ran out with misdirected management,” Fredrickson says proudly.

Among Fredrickson’s “most satisfying successes” have been research he has conducted and directed concerning avian energetics (nutrition issues) in migratory waterfowl and other species and in maintaining the nation’s longest ongoing study (since 1962) of box-nesting wood ducks and hooded mergansers in the Mingo Swamp basin.

“The energetics work we began with breeding wood ducks started a continental wave of (similar) investigations,” Fredrickson recalls. “This was important to me because it enabled land managers to understand what foods were needed at various points in the annual life cycle.

For example, scientists now know that “puddle ducks,” such as mallards and pintails, require a diet of aquatic invertebrate animals such as beetles and snails during the spring migration to ensure success in laying viable eggs on their return to the nesting grounds in the north.

In the book Waterfowl Hunting and Wetland Conservation in Missouri: a Model of Collaboration, published in 2014 by the Missouri Conservation Heritage Foundation, Fredrickson’s former student, Dr. Mickey E. Heitmeyer, who lives near Greenbriar in Bollinger County, said of his mentor: “He created a legacy of excellence in student training, quality research, professional education, and bridging the gap between hard science and applied wetland/waterfowl management.”

That book was dedicated to Dr. Fredrickson and three other notable Missouri waterfowl management pioneers: Ted Shanks, Mike Milonski and Dick Vaught.

After retiring, and despite various health challenges, Fredrickson continues to conduct workshops for conservation land managers across the nation. He lives on his own “wildlife management area” with his wife, Judy, on a finger of Crowley’s Ridge east of Duck Creek Conservation Area.

John R. Stanard is a former DAR co-owner/editor and outdoors columnist. Editor’s note: This event was held before current social distancing requirements were put in place.