Meeteetse man, Worland teen to be honored for conservation efforts

Posted 1/30/20

Meeteetse horesman Duaine Hagen will be among three people inducted into Wyoming Outdoor Hall of Fame in March.

Hagen, Helen Roylance of Cheyenne and Richard Guenzel of Laramie will join 63 past …

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Meeteetse man, Worland teen to be honored for conservation efforts

Posted

Meeteetse horesman Duaine Hagen will be among three people inducted into Wyoming Outdoor Hall of Fame in March.

Hagen, Helen Roylance of Cheyenne and Richard Guenzel of Laramie will join 63 past honorees in the Hall of Fame, which honors those who have made significant, lasting, lifetime contributions to the conservation of Wyoming’s outdoor heritage.

The 2020 induction ceremony will take place Friday, March 20 at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody.

“Each of these inductees have demonstrated considerable dedication to the outdoors in their own ways and invested their careers and hard work into making Wyoming a better place,” said Brian Nesvik, director of Game and Fish. “We congratulate the inductees and their families. Game and Fish and our partners look forward to honoring them.”

Additionally, a Worland teenager, Isabelle Burky, will be recognized at the induction ceremony as the first-ever Game and Fish Youth Conservationist of the Year.

The award acknowledges a Wyoming youth who has shown enthusiasm and leadership in the outdoors and conservation. Burky is a senior in high school from Worland, and has worked in Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier national parks where she’s constructed trails, monitored wildlife, repaired historic cabins and helped control noxious weeds.

As for Hagen, he’s been outfitting and running guest ranches for hunters and anglers in Wyoming for 40 years. Hagen has guided hundreds of hunters and anglers over the years, as well as being active in the Outdoor Dream Foundation for kids dealing with illnesses, and the Wounded Warrior Project for veterans and active military duty members.

“Duaine is an awesome person and huge supporter of the Outdoor Dream Foundation,” said foundation founder Brad Jones.

Hagen served on the Wyoming Board of Outfitters and Guides from 1994 to 2000 and won the Game and Fish’s Wildlife Stewardship Award in 2003.

Meanwhile, Roylance will be the first individual woman to be inducted into the Wyoming Outdoor Hall of Fame. A release described her as “a trailblazer for women and the outdoors in Wyoming.”

Roylance was the first woman to serve as hunter and outdoor skills coordinator for the Game and Fish in 1995. She set up Wyoming’s first online hunter education course and established the Game and Fish’s Becoming an Outdoors-Woman program in 1996; more than 1,000 women have participated to date.

Richard Guenzel of Laramie is a retired Game and Fish biologist who worked with the department for 27 years. He, in collaboration with others, helped develop and implement an aerial line transect technique to more accurately estimate pronghorn populations. Guenzel was also the first biologist in Wyoming to capture a pronghorn using a net gun from a helicopter. He also helped develop systems to record data from aerial operations and advised researchers on adapting distance sampling to aerial surveys around the world, and with species ranging from African elephants, marsh deer, free-ranging horses and burrows, and near-shore pelagic fisheries. He was inducted into the Pronghorn Hall of Fame in 2010.

Tickets for the Hall of Fame induction ceremony are available on the Game and Fish website.

(Editor's note: This version corrects the time that Hagen served on the outfitters board and when he receved the stewardship award.)

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