BACK TO THE FUTURE

Game & Fish corporate partnership stress conservation

By Mark Carter

That the Europeans who first encountered Arkansas in the mid-16th century — much less the indigenous residents on whom they encroached and ultimately displaced — wouldn’t recognize the state’s physical landscape today is a given.

The lay of the land has changed since Hernando de Soto led a battalion of Spanish mercenaries across the lower Mississippi River in 1547 in search of gold. A primordial wilderness of bayou, swamp and bottomland forest awaited them then. Over the centuries, the steady introduction of European settlers and their methods of farming eventually transformed what we now know as the Delta.

Swamps were drained and forests cleared to free up the rich alluvial soil needed to produce the crops on which the pioneers subsisted and ultimately the commodity crops on which their economies were built.

And as Arkansas Game & Fish Commission (AGFC) Director Austin Booth notes, modern encroachment even slowly transformed the wooded savannas that historically made up the Ozark and Ouachita highlands.

Of course, pockets of that old Arkansas primordial wilderness still exist, and The Natural State remains just that. Besides, even a landscape untouched by man will change over time.

But mankind’s impact, well-intentioned or not, leaves a mark. And Arkansas is proof of that.

Booth points out that those closedcanopy forests that now adorn the interior highlands threaten the resources necessary to maintain healthy populations of wildlife, for example.

The lay of the land has been altered all right, and the consequences of the transformation could eventually threaten Arkansas’ continued “Natural State” status.

“Accelerated bank erosion is choking our fisheries and negatively affecting water quality; invasive species strive to displace native species and degrade healthy ecosystems,” Booth stressed. “And pockets of rapid population growth throughout Arkansas, though commendable, have greatly reduced the amount of available habitat and splintered much of what is left.

“Never before have we faced such a diversity of challenges.”

Fortunately, mankind has the capacity to learn from past mistakes, even if it sometimes stubbornly refuses to do so. But since AGFC’s creation in 1915, it’s held conservation among its core missions. As state officials contemplate important is- sues like an evaporating aquifer or the responsible growth of outdoor recreation, conservation is slowly creeping into the forefront of public awareness.

The commission, through the Arkansas Game & Fish Foundation (AGFF), wants to fully establish and keep it there. Its Corporate Partnership Program was created to help it do just that.

Jibbie Tyler, AGFF’s senior director of corporate partnerships, said the initiative gives companies a chance to support the commission’s programs protecting wildlife and fishing and even co-brand. “It’s a chance for a company to aid the agency and target the desired audience. A true partnership pushing each other to success in honor of our Natural State.”

AGFF President Deke Whitbeck said data overwhelmingly reveals that Arkansans maintain a highly positive perception of the commission and its conservation efforts. Officials decided it was time to capitalize, and initial discussions were held two years ago. AGFC Deputy Director Spencer Griffith and Alan Turner of Turner Sponsorship Consultants contemplated how to use the partner- ship marketing methodology popular in sports and entertainment and apply it to the state agency space. They pulled Whitbeck in, and an initiative was born.

“We want to share this positive equity with corporate partners that are stepping up to take an active role in conserving habitat in Arkansas for generations to come,” Whitbeck said. “We have both an opportunity and an obligation to pursue efforts to protect and cultivate habitat in Arkansas. It’s a challenge that requires participation from both the public and private sectors, and when successful is mutually beneficial.”

The AGFF’s Corporate Partnership Program is designed to showcase select partners that are dedicating resources to conservation. Commitments have been received from Arkansas-based Greenway Equipment and PRADCO Fishing as well as Fiocchi Ammunition, the Italian manufacturer with a plant in Little Rock.

Several more commitments are in the final stages, Whitbeck said. He wants to connect with a “limited number” of organizations that share this conservation ideology. In addition to helping do the good work of conservation, partners can benefit by capitalizing on the affinity Arkansans feel for conservation, stewardship and outdoor recreation, and even piggy-back on the AGFC’s popularity, Whitbeck said.

Long term, the goal is to sustain outdoor activities for future generations, to hand over an ecosystem in better shape than that in which previous generations found it.

For Bruce Stanton, vice president and general manager of PRADCO Outdoor’s Fort Smith-based fishing division, conservation is at the heart of the company’s own best interests.

“Conservation is one of those things that almost everyone feels is important, but not everyone actually does something about it,” he said. “We know organizations like Ducks Unlimited, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and the Game & Fish Commission, and even individuals like Johnny Morris of Bass Pro Shops, contribute so much to conserve our wildlife and its habitat. So, PRADCO wanted to do its part both monetarily and through activism to care for our resource and educate folks about our resource.”

In April, PRADCO Fishing announced it would donate $150,000, on top of a $350,000 commitment from AGFC, to revamp the Janet Huckabee Arkansas River Valley Nature Center in Fort Smith.

The company had designated the center five years ago as its “give-back” project to the community, Stanton said. PRADCO employees conduct voluntary quarterly cleanups on and around the center grounds and host a community event at the center on Wells Lake for the commission’s annual Free Fishing Weekend. Stanton said the company has given away as many as 1,000 rods and reels in a day and had folks lined up at 8 a.m. for an event that started at 10.

“With the re-imagining of the nature center in Fort Smith, we wanted to be involved in a big way,” he said. “The commission told us it had committed $350,000 for the revamp. During a meeting of community leaders in Fort Smith, I really felt like we needed to show leadership, because our business is tied to the outdoors and participation in the outdoors by consumers. So, we felt like giving $150,000 to kickstart the local fundraising was a good number.” And in honor of that commitment, AGFC named the fishing pavilion at Wells Lake in honor of 53-year PRADCO employee Bill Jarboe.

Stanton said the contribution served as a challenge to other Fort Smith businesses to get involved. Fourth graders in Fort Smith public schools take a field trip to the nature center each year, so PRADCO’s commitment to it was by extension one to the entire community.

“We know that entertainment has ad- vanced so much in the past 20 years since the nature center first opened,” Stanton said. “It takes more to ‘wow’ a kid than it used to. We wanted to contribute to that ‘wow’ factor to help introduce kids — and adults — to the outdoors and do our small part in being stewards. It does take money to provide resources to educate folks about conservation and then to actually create programs that provide habitat for fish and game and management of the fish and game.”

Bill Midkiff, president of Greenway Equipment, said the company’s participation in the program represents a chance not only to help the commission but also assist private landowners improve their own resources. Based in Wynne, Greenway operates 32 John Deere dealerships concentrated in the Arkansas Delta with a handful spilling over into southeast Missouri. Conservation of resources is in its corporate DNA.

“Greenway is a local family-owned business with deep roots in both agriculture and land stewardship,” he said. “As farmers ourselves, we know that conservation — leaving the land better than we found it — is a very common goal of all producers and landowners. Much of our daily focus goes into long-term sustainability — not only that of our own business but also of our customers and local communities. So, the mission of the AGFC and its private land programs aligns perfectly with our own.”

Midkiff said Greenway has always provided equipment, parts and service to AGFC operations on state-owned habitats.

“We strongly believe in supporting local, community and state organizations as well as participating in the success and sustainability of our customers’ operations, so this partnership made perfect sense to our company,” he said.

Whitbeck said conservation opportunities are there to be had. One of the commission’s largest is the Waterfowl Rice Incentive Conservation Enhancement (WRICE) Program, which aims to keep “waste rice” available for ducks, geese and other migrating birds when they pass through each winter.

“Fall tillage is becoming increasingly popular with Arkansas rice growers, but the practice isn’t beneficial for the numerous migrating birds looking to find fuel they need,” he said. “This tilling buries waste rice that would have been available to migrating waterfowl. Under WRICE, farmers may still operate and harvest their rice fields as normal, but can receive added income by leaving stubble and flooding fields during waterfowl migration and allowing permitted public hunting opportunities.”

Whitbeck said that the WRICE program has quickly become a popular one and represents a valuable sponsorship opportunity. The commission’s five fish hatcheries, which produce millions of fish each year for stocking in public waters, represent more enticing sponsorship bait.

“There is opportunity for a corporate sponsor as AGFC will soon make a significant investment in a sustainable water-use program that will save millions of gallons of water annually from depleted aquifers,” Whitbeck explained.

“This sponsorship opportunity allows for an ESG component of water sustainability and will help offset the cost of raising, moving and stocking 20 million fish across the state of Arkansas.”

An added component to a potential hatchery sponsorship is a connection with the AGFC Family and Community Fishing Program, bringing fishing events, beginner fishing clinics and tagged fish contests to nearly 50 Arkansas communities each year.

Other sponsorships could entail support of agency wildlife programs such as those dealing with deer management, black bass management and urban wildlife, as well as others related to private land management and youth shooting sports.

As outside pressures on habitats increase, emphasis on conservation and stewardship has never been more important, Booth said. And AGFC’s latest strategic plan appropriately includes a major focus on new conservation efforts.

“While our landscape changes under our feet, the people we serve are changing as well,” he said. “The demand for public access has never been greater. Hunter and angler participation is lagging, even after the peak of a pandemic. Arkansans and visitors now approach the outdoors and conservation through a more diverse lens than simply hunting and fishing.”

That means the environment must be equipped to sustain that fast-changing landscape. And leave the lay of the land in the same condition — or better — than it was found.