Awards were presented to the following people during the Kiap-TU-Wish’s 2021 Online Conservation Gala Zoom event that was held on February 25th.
Tom Henderson – Golden Trout Award
In recognition of his multitude efforts on behalf of KIAP-TU-WISH, Tom Henderson is hereby awarded the Golden Trout Award.
Tom has been a member of KIAP since 2007. In 2009 he was elected to the KIAP Board of Directors and in 2010 became Treasurer of the chapter. During his tenure as Treasurer, Tom revamped the chapter’s financial record keeping and began the process of creating formal yearly budgets, changes which were critical to the chapter’s management of its increasing stream restoration activities and funding. Tom played a major role in this increased funding through his multiple successful grant writing efforts, including one grant for more than $100,000 in federal funds. Due to his experience and success in the grant process, he was asked to speak on this topic at the TUDARE stream restoration workshop.
In 2011 Tom was appointed Vice-President of KIAP, followed by serving three years as President of the chapter starting in 2012. Tom provided leadership in strengthening KIAP’s working relationships with the chapter’s many stakeholder groups including the WI DNR fisheries and habitat managers, donors, county officials, the Kinni River and Western Wisconsin Land Trusts, and local sportsmen groups. One of Tom’s special interests was increased involvement with local schools, where he often served as a speaker for stream ecology events.
Beyond these formal leadership roles Tom has been a regular participant at project work days, assisted in Holiday Banquet organization, representing KIAP at sporting shows, and as a contributor to RipRap. Tom’s many and diverse contributions to the mission of KIAP-TU-WISH have enhanced our chapter’s management, outreach, and impact – for which the chapter is most grateful.
Loren Haas – Silver Trout Award
The Silver Trout Award is given to a chapter member in recognition of making an outstanding contribution to the conservation of coldwater streams and their watersheds. In his six years on serving on the Kiap-TU-Wish board of directors, in his leadership and participation as a sawyer in weekly volunteer workdays and in his leadership of the chapter’s Maintenance Committee, Loren Haas has certainly made an outstanding contribution to the conservation of coldwater streams and their watersheds in western Wisconsin. If clearing miles of buckthorn and box elder wasn’t enough, Lore Haas used his engineering expertise to help solve one of the most troubling, persistent threats to our Wisconsin coldwater streams. Sand runoff from floods and large rain events have been responsible for filling our coldwater streams with sand and silt, thereby clogging springs, covering trout spawning beds, smothering insect life and filling holes and shelter spots with sand and silt. Using his engineering skills, Loren Haas developed Elevated Riparian Structures, also known as “ERO” Structures, to help flush this sand and silt through stream systems, thereby restoring spawning, feeding and shelter spots for trout. Approximately 15 of Loren’s ERO Structures are already in place in western Wisconsin streams, actively restoring trout habitat in these streams even as we speak. We recently learned that the Department of Agriculture’s National Resource Conservation Service has added ERO Structures as an “approved in-stream habitat structure” for U.S. Government-funded streams across the entire United States! This means that Loren’s ERO Structures will likely be used to improve coldwater stream habitats across the U.S. for many years to come and certainly makes Loren Haas a worthy recipient of this year’s Silver Trout Award.
Maria Manion – Judy Lutter Communications Award
Maria Manion edited RipRap, the chapter’s newsletter, from September of 2014 through May of 2020. She produced fifty-four issues in that span of time, more than any previous editor. Maria devoted at least one weekend every month to that effort. And that effort showed. RipRap, in addition to being chock full of information, had a clean appearance, a logical and sensible layout and sharp illustrations that blended into an organic whole that was highly readable while presenting a striking graphic appearance. Maria recruited many contributors to write for the publication. Many of the “voices” who spoke through the pages of RipRap brought a new, diverse and refreshing perspective to it. It’s important to note that, while Kiap-TU-Wish has a remarkably active membership, that membership is scattered over an area large enough to make attending monthly meetings a challenge. For those members (and for the Chapter’s extensive “friends” mailing list), RipRap was both the voice and the face of Kiap-TU-Wish.
The time and effort that Maria expended on RipRap alone made her one of the chapter’s hardest-working members, but her work did not end there. Maria also served on the Board of Directors for six years. Her thoughtful and respectful approach to that job served as a unifying power on the board. Maria brought to the board the idea that, given the uncertainties of maintaining the newsletter as printed and mailed piece and the rapidly changing nature and volume of communication, RipRap could not only persist, but flourish as an electronic entity.
Any praise for Maria would be incomplete without mentioning that she brought herself, which is to say, kindness, an appreciation of beauty, a love for the natural world, competence and class to the Board of Directors.
The chapter is thus pleased to name Maria as the recipient of the first-ever Judy Lutter Communications Award and we thank her for the superb work she’s done for the chapter.
