During the Depression, he led a campaign for small donations that bought the land for the Game and Fish Commission's Centerton Hatchery. More recently, he was a strong supporter of the drive for the Conservation Sales Tax.

As longtime state Parks Director and as Director of Arkansas Parks and Tourism, he joined Steve N. Wilson of the Game and Fish Commission in mapping the successful 1996 campaign to put the parks system on solid financial footing.

Mark Davis has always carried the banner for Arkansas and
its rich fishing heritage. After years as a fishing guide, he
competed in his first Bassmaster tournament at age 23 and
would go on to earn Bassmaster Angler of the Year titles
three times (1995, 1998, 2001). In 1995, he became the
first pro to win the Bassmaster Classic and Angler of the
Year in the same calendar year. He has also been heavily
involved in youth fishing activities, most recently leading
the Mount Ida High School Fishing Club to numerous titles
and contributing to the birth of the Arkansas Bassmaster
High School Series. In 2019, he was inducted into the Bass
Fishing Hall of Fame.

With her leadership, many significant areas have been protected by the Nature Conservancy, and the organization has helped public agencies with others. DeLamar lent her considerable support to the conservation sales tax campaign.

He has been an avid turkey hunter for 58 years. He joined the National Wild Turkey Federation in 1975, not long after the organization was founded, and became a member of its board of directors in 1980. He has played a key role in the growth of NWTF into a major and effective conservation organization. Denton and NWTF have been instrumental in a number of Arkansas habitat improvement and expansion projects.

Jerrell and Penny never imagined their small specialty
store would become the largest in a five-state area, yet
that’s exactly what Archer’s Advantage has become. The
expansive inventory, paired with 85 years of combined
expertise, has resulted in Archer’s Advantage consistently
ranking in the top 50 in sales for national brands such
as Hoyt and Matthews. The Dodsons take great pride in
outfitting generations of bowhunters and serving as a
trusted advisor for archery enthusiasts.

The Central Fishing Club at Springdale Central Junior High School was the forerunner of Hooked on Fishing, Not on Drugs (HOFNOD). Duncan came up with the idea in the early 1980s and HOFNOD became a nationwide program. Today's growing HOFNOD program used Duncan's Central Fishing Club as a model.

George Dunklin is a past AGFC Commissioner, the current Ducks Unlimited President, and lifelong conservationist. A third generation rice farmer, George is a strong advocate for rice agriculture in the region. He has followed his family tradition of farming, hunting and conservation. A Pine Bluff native, he has three grown daughters with his wife, Livia and lives in Stuttgart.

He used a background of executive leadership with Wal-Mart to promote the creation of a notable trout fishery on the White River below Beaver Dam. He serves as a board member of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and has been an Arkansas Game and Fish Commissioner and board member of the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation.

Rick Evans has seen major changes in wildlife in his native south Arkansas, and he's been involved in most of them to some extent.

As a member of a multi-generational timber and lumber family, the changes have been close at hand for him in his Calion surroundings a new miles north of El Dorado.

Deer, always plentiful in south Arkansas, thrived even more under the shift from individual and family owned tracts to the holdings of major timber companies. Use of this land also changed dramatically when widespread leasing to hunting clubs came into practice as a secondary income source for the timber companies.

The deer were numerous, but too much buck-only hunting skewed the buck-doe ratio to the point wildlife biologists were extremely concerned. A major turnaround came in 1998 when Evans and the other members of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission put in the three-point rule, meaning a buck had to have at least three points on one side of its antlers to be a legal target for hunters.

The theory was to let bucks get more age as a step to overall herd improvement. It worked. Not a cure-all by any means, the three-point rule showed Arkansas hunters that proper management could  improve deer from the overtake of young male animals to more balanced harvests of older males and female.

Evans said, "When I came on board at the Game and Fish Commission in 1994, 90 percent of our deer harvest was bucks and 70 percent of those were a year and a half old. We knew we couldn't fix the problem all in one year, but we got a start on it."

Turkeys were declining, he said, in 1994. due to habitat changes, disease and predators. Within a few years and with the aid of favorable weather in nesting seasons, turkey numbers went up sharply, especially in Evans’ south Arkansas. Poor hatches in recent years have dropped the numbers again, with hunting restrictions part of the solution.

In his term as a Game and Fish commissioner, Evans helped ease a sticky problem of houseboats, permanent residences, using public land on the Ouachita River.

Especially satisfying to him was the AGFC acquisition of Grand Prairie, the first land purchase after the Conservation Sales Tax was passed in November 1996. The 4,895-acre tract west of Hope was "cows and bois d'arc (trees)" when bought, Evans said. Today it is a popular hunting, fishing and educational facility that bears his name – Rick Evans Grand Prairie Conservation Education Center and Rick Evans Wildlife Management Area.

In various roles with Audubon Arkansas, including vice president and executive director, Fennell was an outspoken advocate for native bird species, flyways and nesting habitat throughout Arkansas. During her tenure with the organization, she was instrumental in securing funding for several state initiatives including environmental programs in the state’s schools, water quality education, energy policy and habitat restoration.

The pen is mightier than the sword, and his cartoon drawing tools have out-performed bulldozers of unrestricted land and water projects. Fisher's cartoons in the Arkansas Gazette were a key weapon in many environmental battles.

Jerry Fisk is a master bladesmith and internationally recognized artist. A contributing editor of Blade Magazine, Jerry's list of accomplishments and awards for his craft is long and his work can be found in museums around the world. He serves as advisor to the Arkansas Department of Heritage, is a member of the Bladesmith Hall of Fame and was named a National Living Treasure by the University of North Carolina at Williamsburg's Museum of World Cultures. He and his wife, Lorraine, live in Nashville, Arkansas.

For years the state’s foremost ecologist, Tom Foti is widely credited with bringing science to the natural area preservation movement in Arkansas. His career with the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission resulted in the creation of several important natural areas in the state, particularly in the West Gulf Coastal Plain of southwestern Arkansas and served as a model for similar efforts nationwide.

Mike Freeze of England is a fisheries biologist who has been a major national figure in aquaculture and fisheries conservation, as well as a leader of Arkansas Farm Bureau activities. He is a former Arkansas Game and Fish employee, who was later appointed to and served a seven-year term on the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

After a retiring from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, he led the fund-raising activities of Ducks Unlimited in Arkansas and has been a prime mover in a number of partnership habitat purchases, including Ed Gordon/Point Remove and Raft Creek Wildlife Management Areas.

Futrell was an avid boat racer in the 1950s and took over the family business, Futrell Marine, which his father Dan Futrell established in 1948. He has since become one of the most well-known and respected businessmen in retail boating.

After helping build Greers Ferry Lake and staying on as resident engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Garner made an even more indelible mark with his yearly clean-up campaigns on the lake which gained national acclaim.

Longtime owner of Gaston's White River Resort, Gaston has been in the forefront of Arkansas' world-acclaimed trout fishing activities more than 35 years, with a leading role in promotion of tourism for all the state as well as his home area.

From an early career as a wildlife biologist, he moved to the Arkansas Highway Department and was its longtime director. He developed the Marine fuel Tax system in which state taxes on boat fuels are used to build access to waterways.