Partnerships Are Key to Success for Conservation Department’s New Deputy Director

First posted on 02-09-2010

Tom Draper has broad experience and a strong commitment to maintaining public trust.

The newest member of the Missouri Conservation’s leadership team has practiced conservation in places as distant as Africa but formed the ambition to work in Missouri while still in college.

At the Conservation Commission meeting Jan. 28, Conservation Department Director Bob Ziehmer announced his choice of Ozark Regional Forestry Supervisor Tom Draper as the agency’s deputy director – resource management. Draper will oversee the Fisheries, Forestry, Private Land Services, Protection, Resource Science and Wildlife divisions. He began his new job Feb. 1.

Draper, 56, is a native of Ottawa, Ill. He says he spent much of his youth hunting, canoeing and fishing around the confluence of the Fox and Illinois rivers “in every season of the year.”

He decided early on that he wanted to work outside. When fieldwork as a forestry major at Southern Illinois University took him to Missouri’s Ozarks, he fell in love with the verdant hills and clear streams.

“After graduating from Southeast Missouri State University, my wife taught her first two years of school in St. Elizabeth,” says Draper, “and we always knew we wanted to live, work and raise our family in Missouri.”

However, his first job was with the Liberian Forest Development Authority as a Peace Corps volunteer. He spent a year helping the West African nation develop sustainable forestry programs for its extensive and largely untouched rainforests.

Upon his return to the United States, Draper worked briefly in Illinois before accepting a position with the South Dakota Division of Forestry. There he helped the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and several Indian tribes manage lands surrounding Lake Oahe, a 231-mile-long reservoir on the Missouri River.

During his 11 years in South Dakota, Draper met Louie Smith, a conservation officer with a passion for conservation that extended far beyond law enforcement.

“He had a real drive to establish wildlife habitat,” recalls Draper. “He saw the loss of bottomland habitat when they dammed up the river. He understood the economic as well as recreational value of wildlife, and he knew how to get along with local folks and Indian tribes to get things done. I learned a lot from him.”

Work ranging from tree planting to coordinating the efforts of crews from nine states fighting western fires taught Draper the importance of teamwork. He says he has never lost sight of the lessons he learned in South Dakota.

“No matter what you are working on, it’s all about relationships,” he says. “You have to build strong relationships with other agencies and landowners to get things done.”

As an example, he cites his experience trying to persuade farmers in his 14-county area of South Dakota to improve wildlife habitat on their land. He believed that having pheasants to hunt could provide much-needed income for farmers in the tough economy of the early 1980s. He learned that the most effective way of selling this proposition was to convince a core group of landowners of the benefits of conservation.

“Once they were sold, they would sell their neighbors, telling them, ‘You need to do this.’ It was one of the most gratifying things I’ve ever done.”

Draper returned to Missouri in 1989, initially working as a forest products marketing specialist for the Conservation Department in Texas County. During the following years, he worked as an assistant district forester and district forester in Piedmont Ozark regional forester in West Plains.

His experience building partnerships has helped him work with Missouri forest landowners and forest products enterprises to manage land for a sustainable combination of wood products, wildlife habitat and recreation.

“It’s all about partnerships,” says Draper, “and partnerships are not easy at times. We all have our own biases and our own perception of where we should go. That can lead to some very vocal discussions about what’s best. But you have to be willing to have those discussions to get the best solutions.”

Draper said working to maintain the health and productivity of Missouri’s wild lands is a rewarding career because his efforts have effects far beyond the Show-Me State’s borders.

“Missouri is world renowned for its biodiversity,” said Draper, “and we have some resources that have worldwide ecological significance. For example, our Ozark forests are critically important to birds that spend different parts of the year as far away as the Arctic and South America. Without our forests, those birds could not survive. That’s the kind of thing that keeps me going.”

Draper said Missourians have a right to be proud of their state’s conservation achievements, and that legacy instills pride and a sense of duty in the state’s professional conservationists.

“People who work for the Conservation Department might not always get it right, but we love the land and value the public’s trust and would never want to violate it.”

In his free time, Draper floats and wade-fishes Ozark streams for smallmouth bass and goggle-eye. He also hunts upland birds and deer, though he says his enjoyment increasingly comes from “being out there,” rather than how much game he brings home.

“I hunt public land, and I find myself wondering how an area where I worked years before is doing. I spend an hour or so sitting in a stand and then I go check on how that land is responding to management activities. I spend a lot of time walking around, checking on things, and if I see a deer, that’s fine.”

Draper and his wife of 32 years, Diane, plan to relocate to Jefferson City. They have three adult children.

The Conservation Department’s other deputy director, Tim Ripperger, supervises the agency’s Administrative Services, Design and Development, Human Resources and Outreach and Education divisions.

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