Business-oriented approach aids wildlife preservation

The highlight of the Partners in Conservation luncheon Sept. 24 inside the Little Rock Marriott ballroom may have been Entergy and its $100,000 commitment to the Cache River restoration through the heart of the Big Woods. And there, sitting at a table off to the right, was the man who opened Cache in Little Rock — Rush Harding.

Of course, the former is a pre-eminent wildlife preserve and duck hunting locale in the state, the latter Harding’s tony new restaurant, but the connection isn’t that shallow.

The investment banker named the restaurant for the river, which empties into the White River just north of his hometown, Clarendon, and he made a financial gift to The Nature Conservancy for the river restoration project.

Over the last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has begun removing earthen plugs that kept the river in a wide, straight-line ditch, altering it from its historic meandering route. Rock weirs were newly installed in the ditch to complete the restoration.

A broad partnership of organizations and agencies — including Ducks Unlimited and the state’s Game and Fish Commission — developed the project, with The Nature Conservancy serving as overall project lead, rallying many partners and coordinating state and federal (and private) dollars. The Corps did the work.

That kind of cooperation and its benefits were on full display, not just for this project but several others, as guests dined on a lunchtime salad loaded with chicken, bacon, eggs, blue cheese and vegetables, and cheesecake or pecan pie.

These private stakeholders at the luncheon, said The Nature Conservancy’s Arkansas field office chief Scott Simon afterward, “see us as different from some of their other charitable work. That’s what they tell us. It’s not, ‘This is my charity,’ or, ‘This is my civic responsibility,’ or, ‘We’re helping out our town.’ They have a very personal connection to the natural world … [and] we try to have a very business-oriented approach” to preserving it. — Photos and story by

Bobby Ampezzan

Hugh McDonald, Kay Kelley Arnold, Dhu Thompson and Nancy DeLamar

Robin McClendon, Ritter Arnold, Tom Wingard, Robert Covington, Josephine Covington and Scott Simon

Johnny Moore IV with son John V, 2, and daughter Rosalee, seven months

Teresa Marks and Jane Hurley (in front) with Graham Rich and Randy Easley

Kevin Hutchingson, Bob Lanford and Pete Maris