By Bruce Ross, Executive Director bross@wisducks.org
This article originally appeared in Wisconsin Waterfowl Association’s February, 2025 Newsletter edition.
Conservationist of the Year Bart Tegen
Bart Tegen from Rhinelander, WI, is WWA’s first “Conservationist of the Year” for his work in picking up the pieces of WWA’s longstanding wood duck box program when Erich Pitz passed away several years ago. Bart volunteered to manage the production, storage and distribution of the hundreds of WWA wood duck boxes.
He closely coordinates with the McNaughton Correctional Facility, who does a superb job taking raw lumber from Wisconsin’s Northwoods, sawyering it to specifications, kiln-drying it, and turning the resulting lumber into kits or fully assembled boxes. Bart picks up and transports these hundreds of boxes to our storage partner (and Bart’s employer) Ponsse. As spring approaches—and wood duck boxes need attention or installation, Bart coordinates with chapters the boxes they need for engaging the local community or hanging in local woodlands.
Volunteers place one of the hundreds of wood duck boxes Bart coordinates to get out on Wisconsin’s landscape every year
Bart has managed to make this a self-sustaining program by fulfilling online orders for our wood duck boxes. This sales program generates about $3-4,000 annually, offsetting the manufacturing and logistics costs as well as cost of WWA internal use…. while producing even more ducklings in the backyards of the Wisconsin-only purchasers.
With over 100 boxes on average being put out every year, Bart can lay some claim to having put three thousand ducklings on the ground in the four short years he’s been managing the program. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that Wisconsin’s record high wood duck population owes some thanks to Bart and the WWA wood duck box program.
Bart jumps into other volunteer activities with WWA as well, having worked the EXPO with his wife Becky, reporting on local habitat-related policy issues (think Pelican River) and participating in the Habitat Committee. Bart’s “just get-r’dun” approach has made the program as vibrant as ever.
Ironically, Bart receives a miniature wood duck box, with ducklings departing on “jump day” representing the thousands of birds he’s had a significant role in putting on Wisconsin’s landscape. Ducklings carved by nationally-awarded decoy carver Bruce Urben.
