Legends of Conservation

Learn the history of conservation’s greatest pioneers and how nature and wildlife continue to inspire and teach us how to be good stewards of our land. A special exhibition and programming will be open to the public on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025, at the Center for Missouri Studies, headquarters of the State Historical Society of Missouri, in Columbia. 

The mostly all-day event includes the Legends of Conservation exhibition, a life-size display of conservationists who influenced the movement over the past two centuries, including Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, John Muir, and others. The event is free.

From 11-noon, attendees can hear a conversation with Sara Parker Pauley, former director of the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), and MU professor emerita Susan Flader, who served as board chair of the Leopold Foundation. Pauley and Flader will discuss how Leopold heavily influenced Missouri’s own conservation movement in the 1930s as the trusted advisor to E. Sydney Stephens, a prominent leader in the establishment of the Conservation Federation of Missouri and one of MDC’s first conservation commissioners. 

MDC’s staff photographer Noppadol Paothong will speak at 1 p.m. about his passion for nature and wildlife photography and how he has been able to capture images that have made him an internationally recognized and award-winning wildlife photographer. 

Wild Missouri – The ART of Conservation exhibition will also be open in the SHSMO art gallery from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Visitors can enjoy Paothong’s photography, as well as the former MDC artist Charles Schwartz illustrations. Schwartz was a distinguished artist, biologist, and naturalist who spent hours studying the habitats of animals and birds. He and his wife, Elizabeth “Libby” Schwartz, also a renowned biologist, collaborated on many projects for MDC, including the book Wild Mammals of Missouri, first published in 1959 and still in print. The couple became good friends with naturalist Aldo Leopold and the famous zoologist Marlin Perkins of St. Louis.

Legends of Conservation will be on display in the lobby of the Center for Missouri Studies from 10-2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 15. Wild Missouri – The ART of Conservation is open Tuesday through Saturday during SHSMO’s regular visitor hours through March 2025.