Pioneers
Dr. Mamie Parker

Pioneer Mamie Parker

By John Bryan

The time is four decades ago.

Mamie Parker—this year’s salutatorian of Arkansas’ Wilmot High School—searches for a topic for her graduation speech. This African-American girl—the youngest of an 11-child family in one of the poorest counties in the nation—doesn’t know that she will one day live in the nation’s richest county and administer a $250 million budget, 2,400 employees, 300 field stations and much more as the Assistant Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Mamie considers what has shaped her young life. At the top of the list are her mother and the outdoors—themes that will become touchstones for future speeches: for Harvard, for the Aspen Institute, for Congress, and for the Bill Gates Millennium Scholars.

Mamie considers her mother, Cora Parker: a single-parent sharecropper who has given her children an appreciation for the value of people and a drive for education. “If you think education is expensive,” Cora would say, “try ignorance.”

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America’s Great Outdoors and conservation education

By Denise Wagner

Wolf Creek NFH’s Amanda Patrick talks to a student about animals collected in a nearby Kentucky stream. Credit Shelia Kirk

The National Fish Hatchery System
Volunteer Act of 2006 mandated that the Fisheries Program increase awareness of the conservation work
delivered at Fisheries Program facilities through incorporation of outdoor classrooms and other
conservation education programs. The Fisheries Program has provided quality conservation educational opportunities at the community level
for decades.

As called for in President Obama’s
America’s Great Outdoors Initiative,
the Fisheries Program connects with today’s young generations by engaging families in conservation. Working in cooperation with
volunteers, partners, and formal Friends groups, the Fisheries Program delivers a wide array of
formal and informal conservation education programs both on and off Fisheries field
stations at national and community levels.

With thousands of outreach and educational events every year, the Fisheries Program reaches well over one million youth alone. Biologists and professional educators communicate conservation issues through innovative, science-based, hands on learning, incorporating programs such as Biologist in Training; Kids in the Creek; and Salmon Fest. Through many of our 154 facilities nationwide, people of all ages experience inspired plants and bugs, and science and conservation. These educational experiences plant the seeds of stewardship that may blossom into conservation careers.