During the Friends of the Neosho National Fish Hatchery meeting Thursday night at the Southwest Missouri Bank community room, a couple of special announcements took place.
“I was very fortunate that with the work that I am doing with the Friends Group of the Neosho National Fish Hatchery, and then the Norfork, Ark., friends group with the formation of that organization and mentoring it, that the chief director of fisheries Stuart Leon, has actually offered me a contract to be able to work as a special consultant for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” said Teresa VanWinkle, president of the Friends of Neosho National Fish Hatchery. “And it will be my job to go out and to help form other organizations, just like Neosho’s and just like Norfork’s. My family is happy. I am interested. And I will very proudly wear my Neosho National Fish Hatchery shirt and gear and look forward to coming home and telling everybody about the news of all of the other hatcheries and share all of the other information. And just put everyone together as one big happy family across the United States.”
Her first position will be in Uvalde, Texas.
“They have a loose group of volunteers who wants to actually come an organization,” VanWinkle said. “And my job will be to go in and to rally the staff together and meet with them. And then meet presumably what their interim board and have a city or town hall meeting, and then from that, pick up the board and be able to help them write their visions their goals and mission statements and get into a 501(c)(3) so that they can thrive and do the same thing for their hatcheries that Neosho has done for the Neosho fish hatchery.”
Since it was formed in 2001, the Friends of the Neosho National Fish Hatchery has been instrumental at being a cornerstone or a stepping stone in the National Friends Initiative in Washington D.C. In 2003, Terry Neff, president of the group, Kay Hively, and some other representatives of Neosho went to D.C. and represented the friends group at that time.
“That effort has continued on and it has become one of my duties as the Neosho friends group president to represent us there and to continue the friend’s group efforts nationally,” said VanWinkle. “In March 2008, that was picked up again by a group of 14 instead of six in 2006 that met in D.C. [in 2003]. We challenged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to recognize us with the need of forming a national organization.
And that has now come about and now formed and all of the paperwork is being filed and the new national organization or umbrella organization for the smaller ones out in the field called the National Fisheries Friends Partnership and so that gives us a voice in Washington D.C., where the home office is from.”
VanWinkle said the importance of the national group is to have friends groups work together.
“The national organization has come, actually out about of the volunteer act that was actually being formed in 2003 and then submitted in 2006 for the signing of it becoming involved,” said VanWinkle. “And the friends groups and a national organization coming together and working in D.C. follows under the partnership of volunteerism within that act. So this national organization’s main focus is to be one big voice in Washington not only to bridge the people in the field, with the people within their fisheries system in Washington, but then take and be the new nucleus of those two entities and go to capitol hill and have their voices heard. So, basically, the national organization is one mouthpiece of all of the little people and organizations that are in the fields of these 69 fisheries. Then the fisheries resources offices, as well as the disease and health centers that are very necessary for raising quality aquatic resources and species that we do.”
VanWinkle said a national organization draft is currently being written.
“In a few months, we will be able to go and have a voice large enough with everyone else that we can hopefully get an appropriations hearing and be able to put more money in the budget in the whole fisheries system,” said VanWinkle. “So when the money comes out of D.C., each hatchery gets a bigger chunk of the pie so that is going to be lucrative back here in Neosho for the things that we are going to see David [Hendrix, manager of the local hatchery] handle and to make it a little more comfortable in his job and hopefully not so stressed when it comes down to the end of the year.”
VanWinkle stressed how proud she was of the local group.
“I am very proud, as the president of the friends group, to be able to go and to be the one voice that they hear and this group was founded by people that love hatchery and the workers, the employees and staff … and I have to tell you that there is no one in the fisheries system there in Washington D.C. That does not know where Neosho, Mo., is and does not know about our little fish hatchery and park-like setting,” VanWinkle said.
The Friends of the Neosho National Fish Hatchery is open to the public. For information, contact Teresa VanWinkle at 389-4908.
Neosho, Mo. —
