Ellen Moorhead Fennell, newly appointed vice president and executive director of Audubon Arkansas, began her job search at the age of 8, when her family moved from Little Rock to Stuttgart. Fennell didn’t know it, but she was already building a résumé.
Since there were no boys in the family, Fennell and her older sister, Jane, got the benefit of their dad’s tutelage—learning to fly fish on beautiful oxbow lakes outside of Stuttgart.
“Daddy took me duck hunting often, too. When you went fishing with my dad, no squeamishness was allowed. You baited your own hook. You took your own fish off the line and cleaned and scaled your own fish.
“One of my most vivid memories of our river excursions is of my sister and me as small girls portaging my dad (who stayed in the johnboat) up a narrow jungle passage between the White River and Lower Crooked Lake. It was muddy, snaky and suffocatingly close—fully leafed branches whipping us in the face. When the passageway opened into the oxbow lake, the first of a series (Lower, Middle and Upper Crooked Lakes), it was superb, sunshine and otherworldly. That area is now part of the White River National Wildlife Refuge, and it is part of the Big Woods where the ivory-billed woodpecker was seen six years ago.
“I am certain that it is because of these early experiences in the out-of-doors that drew me into the work I love: conservation of our natural world.”
It would be several decades and many experiences before Fennell got her dream job.
Life in East Arkansas in a small town was so slow in those days, especially in the summer. “We rarely turned on the air conditioning, and no one had much energy to do much! I think I read almost every book in the public library before I left for college. Books were my window on the world, so literature and writing came very naturally to me,” she said.
“I had a lot of academic interests, but the study of literature excited me most. I never regretted getting a degree in English. My dad was a stickler for us children using language properly to communicate clearly. You had to say what you meant, or you would be impatiently grilled on your sloppy expressions!”
Thirteen members of the family went to Rhodes College in Memphis, and Fennell was one of them. After college she traveled, worked and landed in Fayetteville, where she spent several years working in the printmaking and art department. She also married and had two sons, Henry and Sam Murphy, but the marriage didn’t last. As a single mother, she worked for the Arts Council. “I don’t think I ever had more fun in my life,” she said. “I met Tom Fennell, my husband, in Little Rock, and we were married in 1982.”
Fennell traveled all over the world, working in international development for Winrock International and Heifer International for almost a decade when she decided to make a change. She missed her friends and missed being involved in the community. She left Heifer, started up a company of her own and worked as a consultant for Audubon.
When then-Executive Director Ken Smith asked her to come to Audubon full time in 2002, she really wanted to do it. Later she served as interim director after Smith left. Now she is vice president and executive director. Perfect timing!
“This is a great time of life. My children are raised, and I am finally free to focus on making a difference in our state for the environment. How lucky is that?” she said.
“This is a very exciting time for me and for Audubon,” she continued. “David Yarnold, new president of the National Audubon Society (we are the state office of that organization), is working with groups within Audubon on new strategic directions based on a flyways construct. There are four flyways in North America. Ours, of course, is the Mississippi Flyway. While the birds are in the air, nothing is more important to them than what happens on the ground, so habitat restoration will be closely linked to conservation goals, as well as to strategies for engaging diversity on the ground.”
She has already made a list of some of the obstacles Audubon will take on. “We need to engage more people in conservation; we especially need to engage more diverse audiences in conservation. We need young people, black and Hispanic people—our society is changing, and Audubon must change with it,” she said.
“It is still very much a challenge to balance human and economic paradigms concerning the natural world, yet it seems we are in a period of intense change in the evolution of human consciousness about nature, climate and energy. At this juncture in our country, it seems individuals must pick up where government has left off. Audubon is a vehicle through which individual action can take place.”
The Audubon Center opened two years ago and has been steadily growing programs there ever since. The nature center has approximately 400 acres available for outdoor studies for both teachers and students. The center has teaching gardens and four and a half miles of trails on site. Staff concentrates on working with small groups of students from EAST (Environmental And Spatial Technologies) labs from nearby high schools. Teacher training is another focus.
“There are so many great people who have invested so much in Audubon Arkansas over the past 10 years. Our board comes to mind first: Bland Currie, our board chair, Miles Goggans, incoming chair, and vice chair Catherine Grunden,” Fennell said. “Other good friends who have served on our board include Ann Jennings Shackelford, Terri Hollingsworth, Anna Riggs and Sally Malone. Bo Riggs and Hunter Haynes in Fayetteville are tremendous. Our founding board was so important. Bob Shults, Don Nelms and Ted Boswell were among the giants who helped establish Audubon in Arkansas. We are forever grateful to them. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the seminal and visionary role Ken Smith played as Audubon’s first state director. Mary Miller Smith, too, has been a tireless champion for Audubon Arkansas and the center from the beginning. Tremendous effort and commitment was made by all these people and many others.
“I am very proud of our energy efficiency work at the Arkansas Public Service Commission,” Fennell continued. “I believe we have raised expectations and standards for utilities’ energy efficiency programs in the state. What a tremendous contribution to Arkansas’ future and to the ratepayers who will benefit from these programs.
“Knowing that we have effectively protected or restored habitat for birds that are disappearing because they no longer have a place to live also makes me tremendously happy. The alteration and destruction of the natural world is proceeding at an alarming pace. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can have jobs, we can have our economies, and we can also have clean air and water, good soil for agriculture and ecosystems that support wildlife as well as people.”
She concluded, “All we need to do is try to work a little harder to understand how we can make it work. That is Audubon’s job.”