Citizens recognized for contributions to wildlife

The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission on Saturday will honor more than 20 citizens and organizations for restoring and preserving habitat, launching education projects and taking other action to benefit wildlife.

The volunteers will be recognized by the commission at 1 p.m., April 19, in the Longview Elks Lodge in Longview.

The commission will award Landowner of the Year awards to:

• Dave Billingsley, a Palisades area ranch owner, who has been involved for 28 years in habitat restoration benefitting mule deer and birds.
• Daniel A. Dupuis, a Clark County tree farm owner, who worked with Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) staff to restore fish rearing habitat on Chelatchie Creek.
• John Hocking, of Mount Vernon, who was instrumental in the Bakerview Park Creek and wetland habitat restoration project, including purchasing the site and paying for most of the work.

Volunteer of the Year awards will be presented to:

• Joe Alongi, of Castle Rock, who assisted with sampling and transporting steelhead and salmon in the Mount Saint Helens area.
• Hal Boynton, of Auburn, who helped develop, construct and test a mobile trap designed to selectively harvest salmon and steelhead, worked on upper Chehalis River steelhead restoration and participated in salmon policy issues.
• Fred March, of Cosmopolis, who spent more than 15 years hand-building ponds and spawning channels for salmon and steelhead on the North River, 48 miles from Willapa Bay.
• Bill McKinnon, of Bellingham, who raised donations and organized construction and operation of the Peat Bog Creek steelhead rearing pond on the Middle Fork of the Nooksack River in Whatcom County.
• Jim Owens, of Renton, who served as an advisor on the Inland Fish Policy group and donated needed equipment to the WDFW as president of the Washington State BASS Federation.
• Kate Slavens, of Seattle, who worked on western pond turtle recovery efforts in Klickitat County, including camping outings to mark and radio-track turtles and acting as on-site steward of WDFW lands purchased to protect turtle habitat.
• Donald and Chris Sutherland, a father and son from Toutle, who saved 25,000 juvenile steelhead by cleaning and maintaining a Toutle River trap during February, 1996 floods.
• W. D. Wills, of Burlington, who led the Fidalgo Fly Fishers Club in rehabilitation of Bob Smith Creek in Skagit County. The project involved some 100 volunteers in constructing of new channels and settling ponds, installing incubators and restoring channels.

The commission will present Educator of the Year awards to:

• Robert Brink, owner/operator of Pomeroy Living History Farm near Yacolt and a family farm forester, who developed a curriculum to educate Clark County students on forest ecology and timber management that is compatible with fish and wildlife conservation.
• Dr. Marie Pickel, a North Mason School District Superintendent from Allyn, who gathered community support and raised funds for creation of the Hood Canal Theler Wetlands and Environmental Education Center.
• Tina Floyd and Eli Sterling, co-directors of Earthbound Productions in Olympia, who produced a variety of community environmental education projects including a "Procession of Species" celebration held during Olympia's spring Artswalk.
• Karen Dvornich, of Seattle, who co-founded the Nature Mapping Program along with the WDFW, developed data-collection guidelines for citizen volunteers and built a cadre of 500 educators and citizen volunteers to collect data for the project.
• Joyce Neufeld, Sue Vanderhyde and Serita Zimmerman, first grade teachers at Clark Elementary School in Issaquah, who developed a marine environment appreciation program.

Organization of the Year awards will be given to:

• The Trail Blazers, a Seattle-based group formed in 1933, which worked with WDFW staff to enhance alpine lake fishing, including stocking 115 lakes and promoting alpine habitat conservation.
• Lincoln Tree Farm, Future Farmers of America and Oakland Alternative School in Tacoma which, under the director of Bruce Anderson, worked to stabilize streambanks, plant more than 12,000 trees and shrubs, develop ponds for wildlife use and complete other habitat work on WDFW and private land damaged by 1996 flooding in the Dayton area.