MISSOURI Spring 2024 • nature.org/missouri
Randy Hudson’s award-winning photo in the 2023 TNC global photo contest © Randy Hudson.
The Serendipity of a Great Photo As a thunderstorm crackled over the
That element of the uncontrolled, the serendipity, is what Randy loves. He and Doranne have courted those unpredictable moments in their travels around the world. The Hudsons moved to Kansas City in 1988 from the Boston area. Doranne had been offered a leadership role at Hallmark. Randy, an anesthesiologist and critical care physician, found a spot at Saint Luke’s Hospital where he could help develop a new critical care anesthesia system. In their retirement, they follow their curiosity to new destinations. “It’s finding places that you read a little about, and you get intrigued,” he says. “Then you try to find that intrigue.”
They typically have only a loose itinerary, just enough planning to put them in situations to see something interesting. Maybe that’s a dark hike up Mount Rainier to witness what sunrise reveals or wandering through neighborhoods in India. In the evenings, they talk about the photos, and Doranne writes captions. Each trip is a collection of unexpected moments, like that morning in the motel room. “During the last century, humans have had a rapidly increasing sense of control over certain aspects of nature,” Randy later wrote of the photo. “This image however, captures one of the many situations in which humans express awe and fear of the intensity and intractability of natural phenomena that lie beyond the curtain of human control.”
water, Randy and Doranne Hudson waited inside their motel room. The Kansas City, Missouri, couple were visiting the north shore of Lake Superior and, as he often does, Randy began preparing his camera. “Every photograph has an element of planning and an element of serendipity,” Randy says. “This had both.” In the image he made—an award winner in The Nature Conservancy’s global photo contest featured in this issue—you can see his preparation in the careful balance of foreground and background. But two pops of energy give it life: a flash of lightning, framed in the oval of the door, and the reaction of Doranne, hand near her throat as the thunder booms.
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Number of TNC Habitat Strike Teams in Missouri What Are Habitat Strike Teams?
Partners in the Prairie Conservation groups team up for the grasslands TNC staff from Missouri and Iowa pose with Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland at Drake University. From left: Ryan Gauger, Megan Buchanan, Sec. Haaland, Graham McGaffin and Adam McLane. © TNC The remains of the prairie are scattered across the heart of North America. A few thousand acres here. A hundred there. Today, they appear on maps as islands, but their future depends on a different framework—one that recognizes them as pieces of a whole, waiting to reconnect. In the same way, The Nature Conservancy and a lineup of talented conservation agencies and organizations have banded together to address dwindling grasslands of Missouri and Iowa. In November, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced the group was being awarded $4.73 million through the America the Beautiful Challenge. The federal initiative is administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to conserve, connect and restore 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. Matching funds raise the group’s total to $5.3 million. The plan unites partners working all along a corridor of grasslands, ranging from southwest Missouri into Iowa. The group includes TNC, Missouri Department of Conservation, Pheasants Forever & Quail Forever, Missouri Prairie Foundation, Jay N. Darling Institute at Drake University and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. The collaboration will combine the partners’ individual strengths to focus on entire landscapes. That includes building capacity to do the work through new jobs, student internships and training workshops for young professionals and landowners. There will be cost-sharing opportunities for landowners to implement conservation practices and help with on-the-ground stewardship. The group will reconstruct and manage 28,000 acres of prairie in some of the most important areas for biodiversity. More than 90 percent of land in Missouri is privately owned, and the grantees will strengthen local relationships and support those landowners. That will include a significant expansion of TNC’s Habitat Strike Team program, creating a new team and fully staffing another. They will deploy to plug into prescribed fire crews, battle invasive species and help reseed key areas. One will be stationed in the Grand River Grasslands and the other in the Osage Plains. The teams will be collaborators by design, ready to pitch in for the good of the prairies.
Isaiah Tanner, coordinator for one of TNC’s Habitat Strike Teams © Doyle Murphy/TNC
The four-person teams, each comprising a full-time coordinator and three seasonal crew members, are mobile units designed to combat invasive species and help restore vulnerable landscapes. TNC is staging the teams in different parts of the state. Members will be skilled in using prescribed fire and other methods to fight unwanted shrubs, trees and other plants that can overwhelm native species. They’ll also help reseed some areas. The teams can work on projects on their own, but they’re designed to be highly collaborative with government agencies, conservation groups and private landowners. They will add much needed capacity, especially during time-sensitive burn windows.
LEARN MORE about TNC’s strike teams at nature.org/mostriketeams
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Missouri missouri@tnc.org nature.org/missouri
The Nature Conservancy P.O. Box 440400 St. Louis, MO 63144
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