August 12, 2009 Edition

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Today's Topics

• Hunters drawn for third Arkansas alligator hunting season

• Wildlife officers monitor Spring River activities

• AGFC magazine named top national publication

• Armstrong chosen for national conservation training

• Tommy Sanders sweeps to a niche in outdoor television

• Boating education class schedule

• Hunter education class schedule  

• What’s open for hunting

• Coming up in the outdoors

Hunters drawn for third Arkansas alligator hunting season

LITTLE ROCK – Several lucky hunters have been drawn for Arkansas’s junior season of alligator hunting. The season will get underway next month.

The season will be from 30 minutes after sunset on Friday, Sept. 18 until 30 minutes before sunrise on Monday, Sept. 21 and from 30 minutes after sunset on Friday, Sept. 25 until 30 minutes before sunrise on Monday, Sept. 28.

The mandatory hunter orientation classes will be held at the Hope Regional Office on Aug. 15, at the Monticello Regional Office on Aug. 22 and at the Little Rock Headquarters on Aug. 29.

The following hunters have been selected to participate in the 2009 alligator hunting season:

Wildlife officers monitor Spring River activities

MAMMOTH SPRINGS – Due to numerous complaints about illegal activity on the Spring River, wildlife officers with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission have been conducting extensive boating safety checks on the river. Earlier this month, an operation netted a total of 17 boating violations and 28 criminal violations during the safety check. The criminal violations involved possession of a controlled substance and minor possession of alcohol.

AGFC wildlife officer Capt. Gary Mullins said that agency’s main concern was to encourage boating safety compliance, they recognized the stop and check would likely reveal additional violations, including violations of criminal code. “Various field operations have been conducted on the Spring River in recent years; however, these operations involved wildlife officers working the river both overtly and covertly from vessels and on foot. One drawback to this approach was it didn’t allow officers to inspect all river goers for regulations compliance,” Mullins said. “In fact, many river-goers didn’t even realize that wildlife officers were patrolling the river. Due to the ongoing problems associated with the river, the most visible of which are the criminal violations, a new approach was taken which consisted of a high visibility boating safety checkpoint,” he added.

The operation involved 16 wildlife officers including uniformed teams posted at the initial checkpoint in the river, uniformed officers stationed on the river bank for observations, communications and citations, and two non-uniformed officers in kayaks up river from the checkpoint for surveillance. Two additional uniformed officers were in charge of photography and video. The operation occurred between 11a.m. and 4 p.m. and several hundred people passed through the checkpoint.

Mullins said he felt like the boating safety check was very successful. “It provided an opportunity for nearly everyone floating the river to recognize wildlife officers are not only working the area but concerned about safety issues as well as any illegal activity taking place on Spring River. Numerous positive comments were received from the public concerning the checkpoint,” Mullins said.

Wildlife officers intend to continue enforcement saturations in an effort to curb illegal activity on the Spring River. “Some weekends are not too bad, but occasionally we get a crowd that is just out of control. There is a lot of blame to go around on this but the easiest thing we can do is get the alcohol out of the hands of minors and see what kind of impact that has,” Mullins explained.

AGFC magazine named top national publication

LITTLE ROCK – Arkansas Wildlife, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s bimonthly magazine, recently was awarded top honors in a national competition.

At July’s Association for Conservation Information conference in Baton Rouge, La., the 33,000-circulation magazine won first place among entries from other game and fish agencies. ACI is a nationwide organization of members from conservation agencies’ communications, public relations and education divisions.

Arkansas Wildlife Editor Jeff Williams said it was a great honor to receive the award.

“ACI hands out plaques in two dozen categories,” Williams said. “They’re all worthy, but the big prize is for best magazine. If these were the Oscars, the magazine category would be similar to best picture.”

Montana Outdoors (last year’s winner) was second and Texas Parks & Wildlife took third place. The Arkansas Wildlife calendar was awarded second in the calendar category (North Carolina was first; Oklahoma third).

ACI, which began in 1938, holds an annual conference. July’s gathering offered workshops about handling media during a crisis, marketing, climate change, online publishing, digital archives and many other topics.

Williams said that a tip of the hat should be given to the staff that helps produce the magazine.

“Angela Sanchez, the senior designer who makes the magazine pleasing to the eye and easy to read; Randy Zellers, the managing editor who’ll write about any topic, anytime, anywhere, and Trey Reid, the field editor who’s busy with AGFC video work but keeps a hand in writing and photography. They’re a really talented bunch and they deserve a lot of credit for this award. It’s a small staff made smaller because none of us works only on the magazine. We constantly are involved in many other AGFC projects.”

Williams said there’s a saying about opportunity knocking, and this is an opportunity to thank loyal readers, hunters, anglers, wildlife watchers, conservationists, co-workers and everyone else who takes an interest in Arkansas Wildlife, which began as Arkansas Game and Fish magazine in 1967. “

This magazine wouldn’t be possible without these groups of people who have been loyal to the AGFC and the magazine for years.”

In another national competition earlier this year, the magazine was awarded first place in the National Association of Government Communicators contest. It was the fifth consecutive year Arkansas Wildlife was named top magazine by NAGC.

To subscribe to Arkansas Wildlife, call (800) 283-2664 or visit www.agfc.com. A year’s subscription includes six bimonthly issues (including the calendar, which is available July 1). A one-year subscription is $8, a two-year subscription is $15 and a three-year deal is $21.

Armstrong chosen for national conservation training

LITTLE ROCK - Thirty-six of the nation’s natural resource conservation “future leaders” were recently selected as Fellows with the National Conservation Leadership Institute and one of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s assistant directors will be among them. Mike Armstrong, AGFC Assistant Director for Field Services, has been chosen to attend the prestigious institute.

Now in its fourth year, the institute was founded by the nation’s top conservation agencies and organizations. It continues to address the most significant conservation challenge of the twenty-first century - leadership.

According to research conducted in 2004, more than half of the leaders in state fish and wildlife agencies and federal conservation agencies will have retired by 2015.

“To have competed for and then be chosen among a nation of conservation professionals to take part in the inaugural class of the Institute is a great honor,” Armstrong said.

The National Conservation Leadership Institute was created to train tomorrow’s conservation leaders in the latest leadership thinking and practice; and each Fellow will learn from the nation’s most influential conservation leaders and leadership experts including Marty Linsky, co-author Leadership on the Line and Margaret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science. Through the institute, 25 state fish and wildlife employees, six federal conservation agency employees, one tribal member and four nongovernmental agency employees will work together over the next 10 months on priority leadership challenges and solutions.

Offered each year to a select group of 36 individuals identified by their nominating organizations as “high potentials,” the institute is referred to by many as natural resource conservation’s “war college.” The institute is by no measure only a training program; it is a unique, comprehensive learning experience designed to challenge assumptions, teach skills, facilitate networking, and strengthen confidence, preparing extraordinary leadership for the future. Each fellow was chosen for potential to build effective coalitions, lead organizational change, and deliver results; as well as for their work experience and goals.

“Natural resource organizations nominated top employees to participate in this extraordinary leadership experience,” says Matt Hogan, Chairman of the Institute Board. “The 36 fellows selected represent a diverse mix of people and perspectives from across the country and across organizational boundaries. We look forward to another year of the Institute producing powerful results.”

"By all accounts from those who have graduated from the program, The National Conservation Leadership Institute is approaching leadership development in a very different and effective way,” says Dr. Sally Guynn, the institute’s executive director. “The program is challenging, intense, and producing results in a most dramatic way.”

The institute is supported by the nation’s most passionate conservation interests including: The Weatherby Foundation, Boone and Crockett, Pope and Young Club, Southern Company, Honeywell, the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, the National Conservation Training Center, Bass Pro Shops, the Campfire Club, Dallas Safari Club, and America’s Wildlife Association for Resource Education.

Tommy Sanders sweeps to a niche in outdoor television

LITTLE ROCK – Tommy Sanders is familiar with a broom. He had a job while attending Magnolia High School sweeping out a department store, then his first task in the television world included sweeping the facilities of Arkansas Educational Television Network.

Sanders put down the broom as he moved upward with AETN, found a spot with cable network ESPN and became a familiar figure with the outdoor-related programs on Saturdays and Sundays on ESPN and ESPN2.

Sanders, of Little Rock, joins Cheryl and Bert Haralson of Augusta and Greg Butts of Little Rock as 2009 inductees into the Arkansas Outdoor Hall of Fame. The annual Outdoor Hall of Fame banquet and fund raising will be Friday, Sept. 11, at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock.

The fellow who had that store sweeping job in Magnolia ahead of Sanders had gone on to Hendrix College to study, and Sanders did the same. He earned a bachelor’s degree in theater, joined AETN and traded broom work for that of a camera man. An early regular task was working on the weekly Game and Fish Highlights program, featuring George Purvis.

He moved up to producer and director work with AETN, took professional post-graduate courses in New York then worked with a Little Rock advertising agency for five years. A friend operated a camera for Jerry McKinnis, the Little Rock outdoor television figure. McKinnis linked with ESPN, and an introducer or master of ceremonies was needed for the shows. Sanders fit the requirements well.

He soon became familiar to viewers, his straightforward, no-frills work told what was coming up in the next several minutes of program following program. The outdoor shows were put together in Little Rock, but they were filmed all over the North American continent. Such is the world of television that Sanders once found himself in Alaska for the start of the Iditarod sled race, back in Little Rock for studio work then returning to Nome, Alaska, for the finish of the Iditarod.

Sanders has been an outdoorsman since boyhood. His television work moved into professional bass fishing events, first with FLW Outdoors competitions then with the Bassmaster series that is now a subsidiary of ESPN. Bassmaster events, including the BASS Classic, are now Internet features along with ESPN television broadcasts.

Outdoor television programs are popular with viewers. They see hosts and guests catching numerous large bass or redfish, scoring with plentiful mallards or pheasants and taking moose and elk. In actuality, Sanders and others may be in the field for days getting these moments of excitement with cameras, then more days follow with editing and splicing, honing and timing the footage into a specified format.

Sanders and his wife Casey, a native of Noel, Mo., enjoy free time with a boat on Lake Greeson, and he often joins family members for duck hunting on Lake Millwood and an occasional deer hunt.

For more information and tickets to the Outdoor Hall of Fame banquet, phone Steve Smith or Wendy Glover at (501) 223-6396.