We Are the Ikes
By Barry Drazkowski
The Izaak Walton League of America holds a deeply personal relationship with the nation's waters and outdoors, engaging in paddling, youth fishing events, and critical conversations about our waters, wetlands, water quality, agriculture, and of course the river and its wing dams, sedimentation, and navigation. This intimate connection dates back to the early 1920s, sustained by generations of families who built their lives around conservation and the river.
My own connection runs three generations deep. My grandfather—a local DNR game warden—co-founded a youth chapter in the late 1930s and brought my father to meetings at the chapter building in Aghaming Park, which was later moved to Prairie Island in 1953 to escape persistent flooding. In turn, my dad brought me to those meetings so many years later. It’s where I made lifelong friends, watched families share travel stories, learned to build fishing rods and hunting bows, and absorbed a core community value of conservation and stewardship. That same intimacy drives UMR Chapter president Fritz Funk, whose father championed conservation at Brice Prairie, and Steven Marking, whose father Leif was a prominent FWS/USGS fisheries research biologist at the French Island research station. It lives on in chapter president Anne Conway, who grew up around her father's boat house in Minnesota City harbor and now passes that passion down to the next generation through youth education programs at Prairie Island.
Across every state chapter, members share this profound bond with the natural world, forever shaping young lives through outdoor education. Every year we see how that personal devotion sparks an outdoor passion and connections with thousands of youth nationwide.
Ultimately, conservation transcends demographic, political, and cultural divides. Whether you are a shooting enthusiast or a birdwatcher, Republican or Democrat, indigenous to this land or an immigrant, a shared intimacy with our land and water resources unites us all, we are the Izaak Walton League of America.
