HUSTON REAGAN There aren’t a lot of people who can trace their environmental activism back to high school, but Huston Reagan is one of them. A longtime advocate of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commision’s Stream Team program, he’s been both participant and a seeder of new programs wherever he has gone. It started while attending North Pulaski High School, where he collaborated with his peers to clean up a nearby section of Bayou Meto, a stream that ran near the school that was little more than a horribly polluted dumping site. Amazingly, Reagan and his mates got the stream to management stage, then successfully petitioned the Jacksonville City Council for funds to build two launch ramps for kayaks and canoes. “All the way through high school and a little bit in college, I worked with that Stream Team project,” he said. “We created a relationship with the Arkansas Canoe Club to increase exposure of the program and it became a full-blown community thing. We would have, at times, 40 to 60 kids and parents out there working on the stream, pulling out washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, everything you can imagine.” During college, Reagan participated as a tutor and mentor in Upward Bound, where he proposed Stream Team activities as part of the curriculum, which was approved. “It was a great opportunity,” he said. “I loved the mission; it’s a program designed to work with underprivileged at-risk youth to prepare them to take the next steps after high school to go into college.” Reagan entered college intending to be an English literature teacher, but didn’t like what he saw out of the education industry. Instead, he took a position with ASU Beebe as an academic adviser and outreach specialist. “That wasn’t like a regular classroom. I was tasked with helping students with their core curriculum and
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exposing them to potential career options,” he said. “That’s where the Stream Team thing came into play again, along with a whole lot of technology and stuff like that. My job was to give students a sampler to match their interests and aptitude, and one of those areas was in conservation work.” COVID derailed a lot of the plans he had for that group, but even as he’s recently transitioned into a corporate job in Conway, he’s stayed in touch with ASU Beebe administrators and plans to volunteer with the Stream Team chapter he founded when campus restrictions are eased. He’s also sniffing around to get a similar group off the ground in Conway. “I’ve contacted the Conway Parks and Rec Department about creating a Stream Team initiative here,” he said. “I’m collaborating with Conway High School’s EAST program to maybe get something started. There’s a several-mile stretch of Tucker Creek that runs through several parks here in Conway, and that’s something that my wife and I both considered getting involved with as we’ve started getting more into kayaking.” Asked what continues to drive his passion for improving the outdoors, Reagan said it’s a way of paying back the joy the woods and streams brought him throughout an impoverished childhood. “I grew up in an incredibly low-income, singleparent household,” he said. “My typical day after I got home from school was grab a snack and go out into the woods. That was the routine. I would make a point to find turtles, snakes, lizards, frogs, you name it. I also became an avid fisherman. “It was the best entertainment I could have as a kid to be outdoors, and that’s something that’s disappearing with today’s generation. They’re missing being outside and having that engagement, and it’s something that’s really priceless.”
