Paul Nelson
This year’s Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes Paul Nelson’s lifetime commitment to the protection, maintenance, and restoration of Missouri’s highest quality natural communities and the preservation of hundreds of species of conservation concern. Paul has been a leading conservationist, ecologist, and natural areas manager for over 45 years. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Missouri Natural Areas Committee and the Missouri Natural Heritage Program. He is the author of The Terrestrial Natural Communities of Missouri, the premier natural community publication in the Midwest, and his detailed botanical drawings have illustrated numerous publications. Between 2012 and 2017, Paul conducted an extensive glade mapping project in Missouri and Arkansas where he identified over 97,000 glades totaling 182,465 acres in Missouri and 45,800 glades encompassing over 55,000 acres in Arkansas. This project resulted in the creation of shape files for identified glades in Missouri that is available on the Missouri Spatial Data Information Service
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