Oden Woods and Water

History

WOODS & WATERS CLUB HISTORY

The Woods & Waters Club is an outdoor education club started by Tims Edwards in 1975 at Lakehill School in Dallas, Texas.  When he moved to Oden, Arkansas, in 1980, he established the club at Oden Public Schools. His father Robert W. Edwards, a Montgomery Co. native, always taught, “If you take something from nature, you must give something back.”  This has become the club’s motto.  The Woods & Waters Club, along with the science and agriculture departments, has worked to promote knowledgeable conservation methods useful to the school and the community and to promote student interaction in real-life situations with the environment.

The Woods & Waters Club functions with no funding from the school. All funds used by the club come from grants, private donations, corporate sponsors, and fund raisers. Most of the work activities are held after school and on the weekends unless they are incorporated into the academic classes.  The club has participated in several service-learning, enhancement, maintenance, and development activities partnering with the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Forest Service. Some of the work activities have included construction of food plots in the Muddy Creek Management Area; construction of public fishing ponds; construction of a public rifle range; construction of a concrete boat ramp and fishing dock on North Fork Lake; purchase of a overflow pipe assembly for the Macedonia Lake; purchase, construction, and placement of over 300 duck boxes, hundreds of bird, bat, and squirrel boxes, and several rest area benches; construction and maintenance of two fisheries ponds to stock fish in public waters; and water quality monitoring on the Ouachita River. The club has also participated in protection of endangered species and several animal surveys including duck, eagle, deer, bear, turkey, and quail. The club has also hosted Hunter Safety and Boating Safety courses, annually sponsored the National Kids Fishing Derby, developed, maintained and restored the Serendipity Nature Trail, participated in several river clean-ups, participated in the Project WET and Arkansas Stream Team programs, and planted trees for Arbor Day. Other activities include Arkansas National Archery in the Schools Program, Arkansas Youth Shooting Sports Program, monitoring and maintaining one mile of the Ouachita National Trail and two miles of adopted highway on Hwy 88. The club has hosted several classes of outdoor education graduate students from Texas A&M at Commerce, emphasizing the institution of outdoor education programs in a public school setting. The club has also hosted German and Honduran visitors, sponsored by Heifer Project International.

In addition, the club has received several local, state, and national awards over the years and has been written up in such publications as the Montgomery County News, the Mena Star, the Sentinel Record, the Dallas Times Herald, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the NRA magazines, Arkansas Sportsman, the Arkansas Game and Fish Magazine, “Arkansas Wildlife Federation” news letter and Field & Stream Magazine for “Heroes of Conservation”.   The “Heroes of Conservation” honor was given to Sponsor William Edwards.  The club received the “Youth Conservation Group of the Year” award from the National Wildlife Federation and has also received several commendations from the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission and the U.S. Forest Service for youth-sponsored activities. The club was also selected to represent the state of Arkansas at the National Youth Water Shed Summit held at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland.  One of the club members, Eric Summitt, received the 2010 Student Conservationist of the Year Award sponsored by the Arkansas Wildlife Federation.  Only one student from each state receives the award.

The club enjoys the full support of the parents, community, faculty, administration, and school board. With the continued support of these groups and other private, state, and federal organizations, the Oden Woods and Waters Club will have a long and successful future and legacy.  If you would like to contribute to the Oden Woods & Waters Club, please contact the club sponsor, William Edwards.