Zluticky Receives First Annual Cabela’s Conservation Award
Dave Lueth, manager of Cabela’s in East Grand Forks, recently announced the establishment of the Cabela’s Conservation Award. The award celebrates the role of hunting and fishing in conservation and will be awarded annually to a natural resources student at the University of Minnesota, Crookston (UMC). This year’s award recipient is Lisa Zluticky, a senior majoring in wildlife management at UMC. Zluticky is from Waubun, Minnesota.
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“The Cabela’s Company is pleased to provide this award in recognition of the important role that hunting and fishing have played in the development and maintenance of our conservation heritage in America,” says Lueth, “and it will also honor an outstanding student at UMC who displays significant potential to contribute to the field.” Recipients must have at least a 3.00 GPA, be of senior status, and complete an essay on the role of hunting and fishing in conservation. The award consists of $500 and a commemorative plaque.
Zluticky is particularly grateful for the role her parents played in her attitudes towards conservation. “I am told that I was hunting and fishing before I was born,” she says. “My parents are avid sportsmen and brought our family up loving and respecting the environment. I have listened to endless stories of game and fish that were so abundant that the idea that they would not be available in the future was unfathomable. But some of these areas are gone, the birds and mammals are gone, the fishing holes are gone, and I do not want this trend to continue."
"By example, " she says, "my parents turned back certain fish even though they would have made a nice trophy and let the little deer go even though it would have been my first one. Conservation would have been the thing they were teaching me without my ever knowing what it meant. But these memories are what stuck in my mind and make me want to be a great conservationist as well as an avid sportsman"
Zluticky has also been a charter member of the newly formed UMC Student Chapter of The Wildlife Society and has served as the student representative to the North Central Section of the Society. She has authored natural history articles for the popular press, and she has developed an interpretive brochure on the UMC mascot, the golden eagle, with wildlife professor John Loegering,. “Lisa is a delight to work with because of her constant enthusiasm, dedication, and creativity,” says Loegering. She recently spotted her first golden eagles on a prairie management field trip to the North Dakota Badlands. “It was really cool to finally get to see one after learning about them,” she notes. “And to see one on a nest was especially nice.”
Zluticky will be graduating from UMC this week with her bachelor’s degree in natural resources—wildlife management. Other majors in the Natural Resources Department at UMC include: natural resources law enforcement, park management, natural resources management, and water resource management. For further information contact Dan Svedarsky, program manager, at 218-281-8129 or check the department’s web site at www.umcrookston.edu/academics/NatR.
Posted 05/02/2001
Contact: Andrew Svec,
218-281-8435