The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va., Rob Hedelt Column: Milestone for Wildlife Hospital’s Director
By Rob Hedelt, The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va.
May 20–WAYNESBORO — When Ed Clark was growing up in the Flint Hill section of Rappahannock County, he spent time touring Washington.
The monuments, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the other markers of service to the country made an impression on him.
“And when I saw John F. Kennedy on television, talking about what you could do for your country, I was sure he was talking to me,” said Clark, the president and driving force behind the Wildlife Center of Virginia.
I was thinking of Clark last week reading that the Waynesboro teaching and research hospital for wildlife and conservation medicine had just admitted its 50,000th patient, a common loon with foot injuries.
That milestone followed the Wildlife Center’s 25th anniversary last fall and a prestigious National Conservation Achievement Award.
Given at a black-tie dinner hosted by naturalist Jack Hanna, the award from the National Wildlife Federation was for the center’s leadership in conserving wildlife and connecting people with nature.
While all the accolades wouldn’t have come without the work of many staffers and veterinarians over the years, the center wouldn’t be what it is without Clark.
I first met the confident man of conscience in the late 1980s when he and a handful of others opened a small wildlife hospital in a Weyers Cave double-wide.
The center moved to Waynesboro in 1995, starting a groundbreaking wildlife veterinary program that has trained more than 500 students.
Along the way, the center added educational and advocacy components that made Clark and the hospital stars on “Animal Planet,” brought them advisory roles with governments from the U.S. to Latin America and made eagles and other teaching animals fixtures in schools across Virginia.
I sat down with Clark a while back to talk about his career.
The lanky outdoorsman, who still loves nothing better than personally releasing rehabilitated eagles and other animals, initially wanted to go to law school.
Circumstances intervened, and he used skills learned working college summers as a carpenter to teach shop at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind.
He liked teaching, but was drawn by his interests and convictions to the fledgling environmental movement.
He worked for several of the pioneering advocacy groups in Virginia and Washington, taking the helm of one long enough to learn he was unqualified.
“I cared passionately about what we were doing,” he said. “But I soon realized I knew nothing about fundraising, strategic planning, personnel or the other things you need to run an organization. I made it a point to correct that.”
Another eye-opener came when he went to address members of the Garden Club of Virginia on the subject of preserving wilderness areas.
“I put together slides that I thought were so striking — pictures of rattlesnakes, brown bears, big spiders, you name it,” he said. “I thought they were so impressive.”
Clark said the audience listened politely to his talk, but made it clear afterward that they didn’t identify with his message.
“I learned that day that if you are trying to convince someone of something, you have to do it in a way they can relate to,” he said.
As Clark has helped expand the center into advocacy, best highlighted by the key role it played in battling the use of pesticides found to be killing eagles and other birds of prey, Clark also has seen the center’s vet-training model studied and copied.
He was honored when the center received the conservation award last fall, but is just as proud of the citations the center has earned for running a tight financial ship.
Clark enjoys the visibility his post gives him in the conservation community.
But he said it’s important for him and others at the center to never forget whom they speak for.
“What sets us apart from other organizations is the fact that we come at the subject of conservation through the eyes of wildlife,” he said. “Our mission is the same today as when we started — teaching the world to care about wildlife and the environment.”
wildlifecenter.org
—–
To see more of The Free Lance-Star or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://fredericksburg.com/flshome.
Copyright (c) 2008, The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.