NANFA-- NANFA 2002 Education Grant recipient

Jay DeLong (thirdwind_at_att.net)
Wed, 5 Jun 2002 08:13:14 -0700

It is my pleasure to announce that the winner of the 2002 NANFA Corcoran
Education Grant is:

Fishes of Streams in Proximity to the Selman Living Laboratory of NW
Oklahoma, Survey and Public Education,
by David L. McNeely and William Caire

The Educational Objectives of the project are to:
1. Provide increased knowledge of the fish fauna of a type of aquatic
habitat, gypsum springs and spring runs, and the small, hardwater streams to
which they are confluent, in NW Oklahoma
2. Make school students, undergraduate students of Oklahoma colleges and
universities, persons who visit the Selman Living Laboratory, and the museum
going public in Oklahoma more knowledgeable about the prairie streams of the
Southern Plains and their biota.
3. Provide an opportunity to students of the two universities to participate
in and learn from an educational project about the biota of their nearby
environment.

Selman Living Laboratory Establishment: Located in northwestern Oklahoma 16
km SW of Freedom, Oklahoma, The University of Central Oklahoma's (UCO)
Selman Living Laboratory (SLL), occupies 129.5 ha of mixed-grass-gypsum
prairie in Woodward County. The SLL was part of the historic Selman Ranch,
homesteaded in the early 1900s. Prior to that, it served as grazing lands,
leased from Cherokee Native Americans, by large cattle companies including
one from England. In 1998, Betty Selman was concerned about preserving the
caves, springs, creeks and grasslands on the ranch for education and
research. A grant in 1998 allowed the University of Central Oklahoma to
purchase the biologically important Selman Cave System. Mrs. Selman donated
129.5 ha, an access road, and several other caves to UCO. More recently she
donated 4 acres for astronomy facilities. This is the SLL.

Environmentally, the SLL is considerably different from all other outdoor
living laboratories and field stations in North America. It offers
scientists and educational groups a unique and different ecological
experience upon which to frame both short-term experiments and long term
monitoring projects.

Their proposal dealing with the native fishes of the region is here:
http://www.nanfa.org/education/sll/sll.pdf

My thanks go to grant committee members Jan Hoover, Rob Denkhaus, Maureen
Corcoran and Neil Douglas.

--
Jay DeLong
Olympia, WA
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