RGS

Healthy Forests, Abundant Wildlife, Conservation Ethic

You are here: Home / RGS Blog

RGS Blog

RGS & AWS Covers Magazine Honored with Multiple National Awards

by

RGS & AWS is proud to announce that its quarterly membership publication, Covers magazine, received multiple national recognitions in 2025, earning top honors from the APEX Awards for Publication Excellence, the Association of Great Lakes Outdoor Writers (AGLOW) and the Professional Outdoor Media Association (POMA). These awards highlight the continued excellence of Covers in delivering compelling conservation storytelling and high-quality outdoor journalism. At the 2025 APEX Awards for Publication Excellence, the Spring 2025 issue of Covers received a Grand Award, recognizing outstanding overall quality in editorial content, design and communication. The magazine also earned First Place in Publishing at the 2025 AGLOW Awards...

Read More

Viral Woodcock in Bryant Park Highlights a Serious Conservation Story Beneath the Dance Moves

by

American woodcock in Bryant Park; Rhododendrites via Wikimedia Commons A small, round-bodied bird with a long bill and a signature bobbing strut has captured the attention of millions this week as videos of an American woodcock “dancing” in New York City’s Bryant Park spread rapidly across social media. While the bird’s quirky movement has made it an overnight celebrity, wildlife experts note this moment offers something more meaningful: a rare glimpse into the demanding journey of spring migration. Each year, American woodcock travel hundreds of miles from their wintering grounds in the southern U.S. to breeding habitat across the Northeast and Upper Midwest....

Read More

Member Spotlight: Russel “Dale” Perry, Tri-state Drumming Feathers Chapter, Huntington, West Virginia

by

by Grant Erhard, RGS & AWS Southeast Regional Engagement Coordinator When we hear the word conservationist, everyone thinks of something different. Maybe it’s the exact definition: “a person who advocates for the preservation and protection of the environment and its resources, particularly wildlife, forest and natural areas.” Or, maybe, you think of a specific person – someone like Gifford Pinchot, who viewed conservation as the prescription for finding balance between human activity and the workings of nature – an idea that helped create what we know today as conservation. When I think about what makes a conservationist, I reflect on the...

Read More

Know Your Cover: Lesser-Known Woodcock Covers Along the Atlantic Coastal Flyway 

by

by Ben Larson, Mid-Atlantic Forest Conservation Director  The Atlantic coastal flyway includes some of the most densely-populated and highly-disturbed landscapes in the county, but it’s also a critical migratory pathway for woodcock. Along the Atlantic coastal plain, the American Woodcock Conservation Plan emphasizes that “stopover habitats available as feeding covers are critically important to migrating woodcock.”  With the region’s historic conversion of forests to farms and cities – and the more recent reduction in forest management – woodcock are finding and using whatever covers they can, which we’re identifying with migration data and partners. We’re getting innovative, too, creating habitats in new...

Read More

Chapter Spotlight – Central New York

by

by Nate Kennedy, RGS & AWS Northeast Regional Engagement Coordinator In the Northeast, we have chapters with lengthy and impactful histories with chapters named for incredible RGS & AWS members like Brian Hays and Russ and Carole Dyer, others named for upland writers like William Harnden Foster and Burton Spiller and, even, chapters named for the historic regions they work to steward. Central New York’s been referred to as “the Chapter that others should aspire to become” and their annual banquet’s been called the premier sporting event of the area. They’ve got a past to be proud of and are still going...

Read More

Featured Habitat Project – Wisconsin Forest Wildlife Specialist Program

by

by Jon Steigerwaldt – Western Great Lakes Forest Conservation Director and Jared Elm – Wisconsin Conservation Coordinator This year marked eight years of our Forest Wildlife Specialist Private Lands Program in Wisconsin – a first of its kind partnership between RGS & AWS and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in the nation. With 58% of forestlands in Wisconsin in private ownership, private lands play an important role in landscape-scale habitat restoration, especially where they interface with public land ownership. According to Forest Inventory Analysis data collected by U.S. Forest Service over the past 120 years, the largest decline in young aspen,...

Read More

Join Or Renew Now