The winner of the 2024 Daisy Sticksel Conservation Award is Mary Klunk, nicknamed “Mary, Queen of the Prairie.”

Mary worked for 32 years at Five Rivers Metroparks, first hired in 1985 as a district aide, and retiring as regional manager of conservation. Much of her work was in the creation of native plant areas, including prairies. In fact, she developed the Ohio Native Plant Seed Nursery during her tenure, and brought attention to the importance of prairie habitat. During her years with Five Rivers, thousands of acres of land at Five Rivers were put into native plants, and 800 or so acres of that into prairie.

Mary also was one of the early land managers to use prescribed fire as a management tool, and served on the original certification committee to set standards and training guidelines. She developed programs on invasive plant management and wetland restoration and served on the following committees and boards: Ohio Prairie Association, the Ohio Prescribed Fire Council and the Ohio Invasive Plants Council, receiving the latter’s award of recognition in 2017. 

According to Dave Nolin, who hired her at Five Rivers, Mary was an inspiration to those around her, and was successful in impressing upon others the importance of land stewardship. Nolin told two stories that highlight her personality and devotion to conservation. In his words:

“Back in the day, Mary and I were leading a prescribed fire at one of the parks. We had just discovered that a local nursery company had ‘donated’ a bunch of European crabapples that they didn't want anymore. Our Director at the time had them planted near the park entrances, including one in a cherished prairie planting. Well, that prairie was scheduled for a burn, but we knew that we must not burn up this crabapple tree even though we wanted to.  So, we trimmed the grass around it and burned a nice ring around the awful thing so that the burn would go around it.  We then lit the prairie on fire.  All was proceeding according to plan when a weird "fire tornado" appeared and started making its way across the prairie, straight for the crabapple.  Mary and I looked at each other, half our faces in horror and half in joy as the tornado stopped by the crabapple and seemed to bow down and smite it with a whirl of fire, turning it to ash.  I gotta say that Mary has always had a strong spiritual side and weird but cool things happen when she is out in nature.  I'm NOT gonna say that she caused the fire tornado, but, it is a true story!”

“On another burn Mary and I entrusted the local fire department to conduct a controlled burn at one of the MetroParks while our team was burning elsewhere.  After we were done with our burn Mary and I went to the site of the other burn and saw heavy smoke.  The wind had increased with very strong gusts and ignited fire in a smoldering tree from the fire department’s burn, and fire was rapidly moving uphill toward some private residential homes.  The Fire department was long gone, and our teams were far away.  I started running back to my truck to get a water backpack sprayer but Mary realized that there was only one chance to stop the fire, where a wide hiking trail went through the woods near the homes.  Mary grabbed the rubber floormat from her truck, ran all the way up the hill as the fire reached the trail, and started whacking it with the floormat whenever it tried to cross the trail.  She kept it at bay until I finally arrived and soon after the MetroParks burn team that put out the fire, including the smoldering tree.  Now that is a land steward.”