The recipient 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. You can read more about SLL HERE. Their proposal dealing with the native fishes of the region is located HERE.