Photos courtesy of AGFC
Doug Schoenrock has a lot in common with the people he is tasked with leading since his April installment as the 20th director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Like the 19 agency leaders before him, Schoenrock is a lifelong outdoorsman with a passion for consumptive and nonconsumptive activities alike and who spent decades in volunteer roles and offices at Ducks Unlimited from the grassroots to the national level.
There is also much that distinguishes Schoenrock from his predecessors. A native of rural Tennessee, he spent the bulk of his career in the corporate world, serving various food companies, namely sales and marketing roles at Sara Lee and corporate leadership at the smaller Savannah Food Co.
Despite a boyhood spent in the outdoors, Schoenrock only became interested in duck hunting after moving to Memphis.
Arkansas Money & Politics spoke with the 67-year-old about assimilating to the top job at AGFC and how he has applied the corporate and conservation halves of his brain to the task of preserving and improving Arkansas’ wild spaces. What follows is Part 1 of that conversation; the conclusion to be delivered in December.
Q. Your connection to the outdoors started in childhood, growing up in Tennessee. During the period of your career that was in Memphis, did you ever cross the river and experience duck hunting on the Grand Prairie?
A. I grew up south of Nashville about 70 miles, and I lived in Memphis during my career for a total of about 18 years. That’s where this hill boy from southern middle Tennessee learned in his 30s to late 40s about two things that I had never seen much of before in my life: One was rice, had never seen rice before, and the other was ducks.
Coming from Memphis was just a hop, skip and a jump to get to some of the best waterfowling, I would argue the best waterfowling, in the world. I became an avid public waterfowl hunter in Arkansas because, honestly, I couldn’t afford to join a lease or a club, and Arkansas has a plethora of public opportunities for waterfowling.
Q. With so much of your professional background being in corporate America, how did your career path change to what led you to what you are doing now?
A. Growing up an avid outdoors person — hunter, fisher camper, canoer, biker — I appreciated the outdoors. I grew up as the kid who always got dirt under his fingernails and basically was told in the summertime just be home by supper. I was running the woods and the hills and the creeks and the rivers and dragging stuff home and cooking it. That was part of building a conservation DNA, but it was my time spent at Ducks Unlimited that really helped me understand the nexus of conservation, money, animals and people.
I started at the grassroots level of DU, which, as you probably know, is an events-based fundraising organization that just happens to put their money into habitat, and they do a wonderful job of it. DU runs on committees — all decisions are made at the
committee level, which are led by volunteers — and so in the late 1990s, when I started volunteering for some local activities, next thing you know, I’m on a national committee, and those committees bubble into senior leadership.
I ended up getting on the board and chairing a couple of those national committees, such as marketing and communications. I chaired youth in education. I chaired corporate relations, which was all of our licensing agreements — anything that had the duck head brand on it. After that, I’m asked to be the first vice president, which you served for two years, then the president for two years and then the chairman of the board for two years. It was during that time where I really learned the importance of conservation.
Q. What specifically did that experience teach you?
A. It really helped form another piece of that conservation DNA that is real world. I mean, we all like to go out and get dirt under our fingernails and catch salamanders, but conservation without dollars is just conversation, so I learned very quickly that in order to put work on the ground, we had to put money in the bank. Leading that organization, which is about a million members strong, taught me that, and that, I think, is what probably prepared me the most for this job.
Q. The various perspectives you have had over your life — corporate, volunteer, outdoorsman, conservationist — would seem to coalesce into a natural skill set for the role at AGFC. Was there anything that has been more of an adjustment than you expected?
A. I was not accustomed, and I’m still not accustomed, to the speed of government. It’s just a fact. I have a feeling if you walked these halls, you would run into some of my direct reports and some of the chiefs who are not used to the pace that they’ve been through in the last four months. They don’t have their tongues hanging out yet. That’s not my goal, but my work expectation and my credo that I live by is trusting collaboration with an expectation of results.
Q. How does that translate into leadership?
A. I believe in empowering the team to do their jobs. They’re a heck of a lot smarter than me, and I’m grateful for that. I could never do this job if I was not surrounded by people who are a lot smarter than I am, and I let them run and give them rope, but I keep my hands on the rope. If I have to pull it in a little bit, I do.
I’m not wired to be complacent. I’m wired for accomplishment, and I just think that in many organizations such as this, they tend to be very bureaucratic. I’ve seen some of that, and I’m not intentionally trying to break that bureaucracy up. I’m just trying to run at the pace that Doug likes to run, which, I believe, dovetails well with the public. They want to see success, they want to have opportunities [in the outdoors], they want their children to have opportunities, and so do I.
Q. Traditionally, the person in your role has come from within. In fact, you are probably the farthest outside the organization AGFC has ever gone. What did you experience as an outsider coming in?
A. I encountered a lot of things that have been kicked down the road for years. I walked into this office and looked at the previous three or four directors’ files and went through them on a weekend — wore pair of shorts, sat on the floor and just had stacks of files everywhere. I kept a lot of them for archival purposes, but I also found files about things four directors ago that are still active issues and not accomplished today, and I don’t like that. I don’t want a thick file. I’ve been telling people I’m not going to have a 4-inch file on some of these wildlife management areas; I’m going to have a 1-inch file. Things are going to be done, and people probably are not used to hearing that.
Schoenrock said addressing aging GTRs is a priority.
Q. What are some of the most pressing things that you found that helps you say, “All right, this is going to be priority No. 1”?
A. Well, first of all, some of the priorities are not the fault of the current organization, nor are they the fault of the folks who may have set up reservoirs and dams and infrastructure 60, 80 years ago. At that time, the science told them they were doing the best thing they could do. As science has changed, we’ve learned. For example, greentree reservoirs, probably the most sought-after habitat traveling waterfowl wants to experience. Arkansas has such a rich heritage and tradition of our greentree reservoirs. Well, 100 years ago, 80 years ago, they did a wonderful job of figuring out how to get water on and did a terrible job on figuring out how to get water off. Consequently, a lot of our aging GTRs have water on them for too long, and that suppresses the ability for forest regeneration. Some of the old trees are dying, and we’re not giving new growth an opportunity
We are working with diligence to improve our GTR water management and hydrology plans, and most of that involves getting water on and off quickly. Well, all that takes time and takes a lot of money, and when we experience a spring like we had this year where you couldn’t drive a four-wheeler down a levee without getting it stuck there was so much rain, we couldn’t do a lot of GTR work, so we have a backlog of work to get in there and work on these greentree reservoirs to assist with water control structures, and that doesn’t sit well with the public because they want it done now. They want ducks over the decoys now.
I get that. We’ve had wonderful duck seasons for the last 20 years. If you’re a new duck hunter in this state and you started hunting in the last 20 years, you have experienced the good old days of waterfowling. Well, when we start this GTR repair work, we’re going to get some folks ticked off at us because we’re going to have equipment in there. We’re going to be busting some levees to repair some water control structures, all in the interest of trying to do it as quickly as we can so that we can provide the public with their opportunity. As soon as we get enough dried land to get in on these things, we’re going to work on them.
Q. What response have you experienced from the public when you talk about these things?
A. I love the passion of Arkansans, and that makes every voice important, whether it’s a negative or a positive voice. I’ve always said my office is open door, and people have taken advantage of that. I get letters and texts and emails every week, some negative, some positive. I answer every one of them — maybe not giving them the answer they want to hear — but I answer because we’re here to face the public, and that’s something that I have to remind our team a lot. If we ever start thinking we are standalone and we are smarter than the public, then we’re not doing our job.
