Arkansas Outdoors

During his term on the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Steve Cook of Malvern didn’t say much in public, but his leadership resuscitated a gasping agency.

During his seven-year term on the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Steve Cook of Malvern didn’t say much in public, but his leadership behind the scenes resuscitated a gasping agency.

Cook will leave the agency in good health when he drops the gavel on his final meeting today in Little Rock.

“Time flies,” said Cook, an entrepreneur from Hot Spring County. “When Governor [Mike] Beebe appointed me to the commission, [former commissioner] George Dunklin said, ‘You’ve got 84 meetings to go.’ ”

Like Dunklin, Cook said a commissioner’s final year as chairman is the most formal.

“Everything is good the first six years, but it changes,” Cook said. “It’s more intense, more down to earth. It’s more down to business when you sit in that chair.”

Cook’s early years saw the commission in constant turmoil that gradually abated with the subsequent appointments of Ford Overton of Little Rock and Ken Reeves of Harrison, and spearheaded by former commissioner Fred Brown of Corning. With the hiring of former director Mike Knoedl, that core group provided stability in both personnel and policy.

“Things were pretty tumultuous when I came on board,” Cook said. “There was a lot of talk and disagreement about freedom of information in the agency, and there was a lot of division in the commission itself. There were some leadership issues, and it was definitely a learning experience the first few months until I could get my feet on the ground and learn the issues and what the problems were.”

During Cook’s term, the commission enacted policies to stabilize chronic budgetary anxieties.

“We were trying to make sure bills got paid and we were trying to have money to do capital improvement, and it just wasn’t there,” Cook said. “With the team we have in place now, we have strong budgets, and we’re making capital improvements that have been needed for many years.”

During Cook’s term, the commission emphasized strategic planning. This includes policies to address the longterm health of the state’s green tree reservoirs and restoring upland grassland habitats to recover bobwhite quail and other upland species. The latter involved creating a new voluntary quail stamp to help pay for quail restoration efforts.

“We increased non-resident waterfowl stamp fees to buy about $2.5 million worth of new equipment to work on our wildlife management areas,” Cook said. “We couldn’t just work off maintenance and operations money. We had to have capital improvement money.

“And, we spent $4 million to upgrade our communications

system for our enforcement officers for their safety.”

His term also saw the detection of chronic wasting disease in Arkansas and the proliferation of Asian carp in the state’s waterways.

“CWD was the scariest thing that happened during my tenure,” Cook said. “I don’t know that we know any more about it now than we did the day it was brought to our attention in Arkansas. The jury is still out on the who, what, when, where and why of it, but we have a great management plan in place and a great staff working on it.

“There are too many unknowns. There are a lot of different science-based opinions. You can shake them up in a bottle and pour them out and still be in the same place. The commission should be extremely careful going forward.”

Quail restoration is challenging because of public apathy.

“I used to say that we were

missing a generation of quail hunters, but that’s not factual,” Cook said. “We’re missing two generations. That’s going to be an educational issue going forward. It’s going to take guys like myself with bird dogs getting younger people out there in order for restoration efforts to be successful.”

Probably the commission’s most far-sighted effort in the last two years is its emphasis on recruiting, retaining and reactivating hunters and anglers. The commission has used the “R3” effort to track trends in license sales and reach out to existing, potential and lapsed sportsmen to invest in wildlife and fisheries conservation efforts.

I well remember the day when Cook joined the commission. Those were stormy days that lasted longer than they should have.

Things are much smoother now, and Cook departs as a highly successful and effective commissioner.