Conservation Corner: September 23, 2002

Aycock Receives Distinguished Service Award From Interior
by James L. Cummins

In recognition for his outstanding service and notable achievements with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the past 33 years, Ray Aycock of Flora, Mississippi, has received the Distinguished Service Award from the U.S. Department of Interior.

Utilizing an innate connection with the land, unprecedented network of stakeholders, biological expertise and people skills developed during three decades of cooperative, on-the-ground land management activities in the Southeast, Aycock has selflessly and tirelessly pursued a means for recovery of bottomland hardwood forests in the Lower Mississippi Valley. His contributions to the recovery of this imperiled ecosystem are truly unequaled in terms of scope, vision, knowledge and perseverance.

In 1999, as supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife's (Service) Wildlife Habitat Management Branch in Jackson, Mississippi, Aycock successfully coordinated a partnership which resulted in the largest private reforestation effort in the nation. Illinova Generating Company gave the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation $13.7 million to reforest more than 100,000 acres in the Lower Mississippi Valley over a five-year period. The completed project will result in the planting of 30 million new trees. The reestablishment of the bottomland hardwood forest will create quality habitat for migratory waterfowl, black bears and neotropical birds. And, since trees naturally extract and store carbon, the agreement also represents a recognizable, positive and proactive approach to environmental concerns for the increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

In 2001, as Supervisor of the Service's Mississippi Ecological Service Field Office in Jackson, Aycock began promoting the creation of a unique partnership with a mission to assist in the restoration and revitalization of Mississippi's environmentally degraded and economically impoverished Delta. Aycock directed members of his staff to research and assimilate data regarding the ecological and economic benefits of land-use diversification and restoration on marginal agricultural lands. This data, along with a conceptualization of what issues the partnership might undertake, was then presented to local, state and federal government agencies, non-governmental organizations and private landowners in the Delta to solicit input.

Aycock has encouraged private landowners to capitalize on nature-based tourism opportunities like hunting leases and bird watching on marginal lands along with conventional, sustainable agriculture on lands more suited for farming thus promoting the conservation and restoration of bottomland hardwood habitats.

Congratulations Ray! This award is well deserved.


James L. Cummins is Executive Director of the Mississippi Fish and Wildlife Foundation in Stoneville, Mississippi. Known as "Wildlife Mississippi," the Foundation is a non-profit, conservation organization founded to conserve, restore and enhance fish, wildlife and plant resources throughout Mississippi