When nature calls, no one answers it better than the Murray State Wildlife and Fisheries Society. As an organization at Murray for years, the Murray State Wildlife and Fisheries Society has refined its skills and students into the best they can be.
Taking pride in the students who participate, the Wildlife Society makes it as much of a professional organization as possible, dedicating everything they have to helping students make connections to real world opportunities after graduation.
“We give them everything we can,” said Cody Fouts, president of the Wildlife Society and senior from Booneville, Ind. “We bring in professional speakers from all different kinds of fields.”
This will be showcased later this month at the Wildlife Society’s last meeting of the year, on April 24, featuring a speaker from the Kentucky Department of Natural Resources and Community Outreach Conservation.
Also coming up on Earth Day, the Wildlife Society is screening the film “Green Fire” in the Curris Center Theater. “Green Fire” is a full length documentary film showcasing the career of renowned environmentalist Aldo Leopold.
The Murray State Wildlife and Fisheries Society gets their students into action. Every year around Spring Break, the Wildlife Society travels to the Southeastern Wildlife Conclave where they test their skills in numerous competitions.
Among the competitions are the quiz bowl, where students compete in a Jeopardy-style contest over environmental trivia, and the essay contest where students compete in writing essays on topics dealing with the environment. This year the Wildlife Society’s own Emily Dowell placed third in the essay contest.
A couple more competitions worth noting are the orienteering competition which makes students use nothing more than a compass and given coordinates to locate their destination, the archery competition and the obstacle course.
Overall, Murray State placed 16th out of 24 schools represented at the conclave.
“We didn’t do as well as we usually do at the conclave, but we know we had fun and that there’s always next year,” Fouts said.
Some of the major rivals for Murray State at the conclave are the universities renowned for their agriculture departments, the University of Georgia and Auburn University.
If any students are interested in joining and participating in the Murray State Wildlife and Fisheries Society, they can be contacted through their Facebook page or via an email to Fouts at cody.fouts@murraystate.edu or Steve White at swhite@murraystate.edu.