The Nature Conservancy presents Fred and Loucille Dahmer Conservation Award to Paul Fortune
Karnack native receives award for commitment to conserving Caddo Lake
In recognition of his many years of work to conserve Caddo Lake, The Nature Conservancy has honored Paul Fortune of Karnack with the Fred and Loucille Dahmer Conservation Award. The award was presented by the Conservancy’s Texas Board of Trustees on Thursday, Oct. 5, during a reception preceding the board’s statewide meeting at Caddo Lake.
“The Fred and Loucille Dahmer Conservation Award is given in the spirit of the late husband and wife who devoted 20 years of their lives to the study and conservation of Caddo Lake,” said Carter Smith, the Conservancy’s Texas state director. “Paul has been instrumental in bringing the community together to protect Texas’ only natural lake and in establishing Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge.” The Conservancy’s 1,000-acre nature preserve at Caddo is named in honor of the Dahmers.
A native of Karnack, Fortune, 56, grew up on Big Cypress Bayou and has lived in the Caddo Lake area all his life. He is married to Carol Fortune, and they have four children.
Carol Fortune said her husband’s early interest in conservation was influenced through his association with the Dahmers and, later, his friendships with Caddo Lake Institute co-founder Dwight Shellman and longtime residents and lake conservation activists Dick and Joanne Bartlett. Dick Bartlett is an honorary Texas trustee for The Nature Conservancy, former chairman of the Texas Board of Trustees and a member of the organization’s global advisory board.
“Paul Fortune is an outstanding example of a lay member of the community who has mastered the key scientific principles of conserving environmental flows,” said Bartlett, who is a member of the Texas Environmental Flows Advisory Committee (EFAC). “A core element of the legislation that EFAC is proposing is the formation of regional stakeholder groups in each of the bay/basin ecosystems to be formed. Texas will need many more Paul Fortunes to man these regional teams, charged with the responsibility of assuring water for future generations of humans and wildlife.”
Fortune is vice president of the Greater Caddo Lake Association, which represents several entities and supports activities to conserve, enhance and promote the lake. He is chairman of the Restoration Advisory Board, which promotes community awareness and obtains constructive community review and comment on environmental restoration at the former Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant, now part of the wildlife refuge. He serves as a member of the Cypress Valley Navigation District and on the boards of the Friends of Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge and the Caddo Lake Management Group.
He also is a member of the Residents Working Group on invasive species management at Caddo Lake, formed to address explosive growth of invasive water hyacinth in the lake, facilitated by the Caddo Lake Institute. The group studied and recommended control measures that were adopted, and Fortune continues to be an advocate for management of this destructive invader. With the recent discovery of invasive giant salvinia in Caddo, he is actively involved in developing control measures for this species, as well.
Fortune is a participant in a series of workshops at Caddo Lake in which scientists, water managers and local community members are seeking to improve the overall health of the freshwater system affecting Big Cypress Bayou and other tributaries to Caddo Lake while continuing to meet human demands such as drinking water and recreation. Caddo is included the Conservancy’s Sustainable Rivers Project, a pilot project with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer to protect the river ecosystems downstream of 12 dams in ten states. The workshops are organized in partnership with the Caddo Lake Institute and The Nature Conservancy’s Sustainable Waters program.
Fortune also is actively involved in the Northeast Texas Municipal Water District’s watershed protection planning meetings for the region.
In the 1990s, Fortune was a member of the Longhorn Refuge Neighbors Association, a group of Karnack and Uncertain residents who explored the possible reuse of the Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant as a national wildlife refuge. After study, the group presented favorable recommendations to their neighbors and to the Harrison County Commissioners Court. According to Shellman, their efforts encouraged the institute to study and support the creation of the refuge. He also was a member of the wildlife refuge’s Transition Manager’s Group, instrumental in the process that lead to the transfer of Army lands and creation of the refuge.
“Paul has acted as a key community counselor to the Caddo Lake Institute for a decade,” said institute co-founder Shellman, citing “the invaluable nature of Paul’s record of consistent and valuable advice and guidance.”
“Paul lives his life trying to find new ways to conserve and to protect what God has given us,” said Carol Fortune of her husband’s commitment to Caddo Lake. “He never stops studying and asking questions.”
Believed to have been created by logjams on the Red River, Caddo Lake and its surrounding wetlands are a mixed bottomland hardwood forest and shallow bald cypress swamp that cover 50 square miles, half in Texas and half in Louisiana. Long regarded as one of the best remaining examples of this forest type, the area was declared the United States’ thirteenth Wetland of International Importance by the Ramsar Convention, an intergovernmental treaty that recognizes exemplary wetland systems. A maze of bayous and cypress swamps, Caddo Lake and its surroundings support the richest array of aquatic creatures in the area, with more than 20 mussel species and 90-plus species of fish, including uncommon species such as the paddlefish. The Conservancy has been working to protect Caddo Lake since the early 1990s and was instrumental in the creation of Caddo Lake State Natural Area.
Photo download:
Paul Fortune - © Carol Fortune
___________________________________________
The Nature Conservancy is an international, nonprofit organization that preserves plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. To date, the Conservancy and its nearly 1 million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped protect more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. In the Lone Star State, The Nature Conservancy of Texas owns 35 nature preserves and conservation projects and assists private landowners to conserve their land through more than 70 voluntary land-preservation agreements. The Nature Conservancy of Texas protects 250,000 acres of wild lands and, with partners, has conserved close to a million acres for wildlife habitat across the state. Visit The Nature Conservancy of Texas on the Web at nature.org/texas.
|
Join The Nature Conservancy on
Facebook
Flickr
Twitter