WGFD recognizes outstanding outdoorsmen

Published on Jan. 25, 2020

Three individuals who have made significant contributions to the Wyoming outdoors will be inducted into the 2020 Wyoming Outdoor Hall of Fame. Helen Roylance, Richard Guenzel and Duaine Hagen will join 63 past honorees. The induction ceremony will take place March 20 in Cody at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
            “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 Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD). “We congratulate the inductees and their families. WGFD and our partners look forward to honoring them.”
            The Hall of Fame honors individuals, both living and posthumously, who have made significant, lasting, lifetime contributions to the conservation of Wyoming’s outdoor heritage. The Wyoming Outdoor Hall of Fame was established in 2004 by Gov. Dave Freudenthal to celebrate individuals who have shown leadership and vision related to conserving wildlife, habitat or hunting and fishing heritage.
            Helen Roylance of Cheyenne is a trailblazer for women and the outdoors in Wyoming. Roylance was the first woman to hold the position of hunter and outdoor skills coordinator for the WGFD in 1995. 

            Roylance established the WGFD’s “Becoming an Outdoors-Woman” program in 1996, where more than 1,000 women have participated to date. She also set up the first online hunter education course in the state. Roylance is the first woman to be solely inducted into the Wyoming Outdoor Hall of Fame.
            Richard Guenzel of Laramie is a retired WGFD biologist who worked with the department for 27 years. He, in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Johnson of WGFD, Dr. Fred Lindzey of the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and Mr. Fred Reed of Western Air Research helped develop and implement an aerial line transect technique to more accurately estimate pronghorn populations. 

            Guenzel was 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 burros and near-shore pelagic fisheries. His work on pronghorn has been acknowledged with many awards, including induction into the Pronghorn Hall of Fame in 2010.
            Duaine Hagen of Meeteetse is an accomplished horseman who has 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 being active in the Outdoor Dream Foundation for kids dealing with illnesses and the Wounded Warrior Project for veterans and active military duty members. 

            He was appointed by the governor in 1993 to the Wyoming Board of Outfitters and remained on it through 2003. Also in 1993, Hagen won the WGFD’s Wildlife Stewardship Award.
            The first WGFD Youth Conservationist of the Year, Isabelle Burky, will also be recognized at the Hall of Fame Banquet. 

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. Her favorite outdoor activity is hunting and she intends to pursue a degree in wildlife biology. 

            This article is courtesy of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Send comments on this article to roundup@wylr.net.