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Retired from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Rick McGeough has joined Great Ape Trust of Iowa as a public saftey officer. Great Ape Trust Photo. |
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Rick McGeough wrote many of Iowa’s laws regulating hunting and fishing
Des Moines, Iowa – September 29, 2008 – As a kid growing up in Waterloo in the 1950s, Great Ape Trust of Iowa’s newest public safety officer was happiest when he was holding a fishing pole, listening to the rich melodic carol of a rose-breasted grosbeak or the distinct trill of a rufous-sided towhee, and dreaming of the next canoe trip down the Cedar River or an adventure in some other natural outpost.
At age 10, Rick McGeough even thought he’d discovered a way to fast-forward his life and immediately begin a dream job with the Iowa Conservation Commission, the forerunner to today’s Iowa Department of Natural Resources. State truancy law at the time required youths to attend school through at least the eighth grade, and clever young McGeough figured he had only a year to go.
Telling a story that sounds borrowed from “The Andy Griffith Show,” McGeough recalls his father feigning cooperation and never betraying what had to be absolute exasperation only a parent can grasp as his son revealed his plan.
“I came home from the eighth grade and announced, ‘I’m done,’” the now silver-haired McGeough said. “My dad said, ‘You know, Son, you’ve got the whole summer ahead of you,’ and I could tell by the look on his face that he hadn’t bought into that completely. But he didn’t say, ‘You’re an idiot.’ He asked me what my plans were, and I said I was going to go to work for the conservation commission.”
Rather than arguing the point, the elder McGeough offered logic that, naïve as his son admits to being at the time, made perfect sense:
“Dad goes, ‘Well, that’s probably a perfect profession for you as much as you like being outdoors, but let me explain something to you: If you quit school and are working for the conservation commission, I don’t have to feed you, clothe you or house you. Maybe you better get the job and then quit school.’”
His father even arranged for his son to meet with conservation commission officials in downtown Des Moines and formally apply for a job. Rick McGeough strode in with the confidence of youth, announcing that he could start work the next day.
The interviewer’s probing questions didn’t initially dash his hopes. “No sir, I don’t have a college degree,” he said, but still self-assured, he added dismissively, “I plan to work with wildlife.”
McGeough chuckles at the memory. “He said to me, ‘Son, we take our wildlife in this state very seriously, and we don’t turn it over to just any novice. You have to have a proper education. But you seem to be a young man who knows what he wants, and we do have some labor jobs we could bring you on board for – cleaning septic tanks and jobs like that.”
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Conservation, both on Great Ape Trust of Iowa's campus, pictured here, and around the world, is an ethic that resonates with Rick McGeough, a new public saftey officer who spent most of his professional career working for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Great Ape Trust photo.
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That wasn’t what young McGeough had in mind at all.
The man waited for reality to sink in. “Or,” McGeough recalls him saying, “you could go ahead and get that degree.”
A team of Hollywood writers couldn’t have scripted a better platform for Mayberry Sheriff Andy Taylor, Griffith’s character in the long-running television series, to impart on Opie one of life’s important lessons.
Appropriately humbled, McGeough convinced the principal at Waterloo’s Columbus High School that a transcript marred by C’s and D’s shouldn’t preclude him from enrolling in the college preparatory math and science he’d need. How he did that – threatening to enroll in public school and taking the ever-important tuition with him – showed the moxie in his conviction. He started earning A’s and B’s, and received a bachelor of science degree in biology from Upper Iowa University in 1968. A stint in the U.S. Army, where he served three years as a helicopter pilot, and an unsatisfying private sector job as a laboratory biologist, delayed his dream, but he did indeed fulfill his dream of working in wildlife conservation.
He got a toehold in the natural world in 1972, when he agreed to work at summer wages for the Black Hawk County Conservation Board and develop innovative fishery, forest-reserve and wildlife programs as the county’s first-ever natural resources coordinator. If he didn’t deliver, the conservation board could fire him. Eventually, the programs he developed were replicated across Iowa.
A year later, he got the job he’d applied for as a 10-year-old and went to work for the former conservation commission as a state conservation officer assigned to Warren and Marion counties. Beth, McGeough’s wife of 38 years, was his unpaid assistant, assisting with animal care, receptionist duties and selling hunting and fishing licenses while her husband gave programs.
By the time McGeough retired in 1999, he had worked his way up to chief of the Iowa DNR’s Fish and Wildlife Law Enforcement Bureau – one of three DNR administrators who answered to the guy who answered to the governor.
Along the way, McGeough wrote and shepherded major policy changes through the Iowa Legislature, including the landmark Mandatory Hunter Education Program requiring that hunters born after Jan. 1, 1972, complete a course outlining responsibilities ranging from hunter and firearms safety to wildlife conservation ethics. He developed the TIP (Turn In Poachers) program, created the DNR’s first covert investigation unit to deal with commercial crimes involving wildlife, developed a field training program for beginning conservation officers, hired the state’s first female conservation officer under a program he developed to recruit women and other minorities into the conservation officer workforce, designed the six-district system used today by the DNR Law Enforcement Bureau, created Iowa’s Recreational Safety Officer Program, and developed and implemented the bureau’s use of wildlife decoys in law enforcement. During his tenure at the DNR, he also selected and trained more than half of the state’s 100 conservation officers.
Great Ape Trust Director of Public Safety Mike German said that with as many as 95 percent of the issues his officers deal with related to trespassing hunting and fishing violations, McGeough brings a special set of leadership skills to Great Ape Trust.
“His law enforcement responsibilities with the bureau were different than what those of us with peace officer backgrounds were involved in,” German said. “Most of us have backgrounds that deal with law enforcement on crimes against person or property, and we don’t know all the ins and outs of hunting and fishing laws.”
German also credits McGeough with exercising sound judgment and using discretion when he encounters people trespassing or hunting and fishing illegally.
“I have dealt with these issues my entire career, and you have to understand all of the factors to be able to make intelligent decisions about whether they’re breaking any law and, if they are, whether you want to make an issue of it,” said McGeough, who is certified in Verbal Judo, training in the art of gentle persuasion outlined in the book by the same name by George J. Thompson and Jerry B. Jenkins.
“When I started wearing a handgun for a living to protect myself, I realized that I have the responsibility to be a professional,” McGeough said.
McGeough, who is a certified state firearms instructor, also is a professional marksman who shoots competitively. He is a seven-time recipient of presidential citations given to the top 100 police marksmen in the nation, and for 15 consecutive years was recognized by the Iowa governor for being among one of top 20 police marksmen in the state. In 1986, he topped other conservation officers in the national police marksmen championships.
In 1997, he was selected Wildlife Conservation Officer of the Year by Shikar-Safari Club International, which makes annual grants to research, game departments and organizations through its foundation and annually recognizes the top wildlife conservation officers in each state.
After his retirement from the state, McGeough worked in the sporting goods department of a major retail store, where he found himself explaining the mandatory hunter education law he’d written to customers applying for hunting permits. He held that post-retirement job for three years, but after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, “I felt like I was wasting a master’s degree in criminal justice administration and all that training, and should be doing something more significant,” he said.
McGeough worked as a private security officer and guard for six years, but those jobs weren’t good fits, either, he said. When he was providing career advice to a security officer he’d worked with in the past, he learned of the vacancy at Great Ape Trust.
Today, as he patrols the perimeter of Great Ape Trust’s river forest, McGeough feels as if he’s come full circle. He patrols the same stretch of the Des Moines River that he watched over when he began his career with the DNR as a conservation officer and the changes in what is now Great Ape Trust’s 230-acre campus are not lost on him.
“In the past, this area was treated like a landfill, with people dumping their debris. People ran fish traps in the river and tried to fish illegally, spotlight deer and shoot waterfowl,” McGeough said. “The property has much better stewardship now.”
There are other signals that make McGeough believe he’s taken the right job at the right time in his life. Not only is the welfare of its resident orangutans and bonobos at the heart of Great Ape Trust’s mission, the organization’s focus on conservation both internationally and locally, is dear to his heart.
“I’m back in the conservation movement, which is what my whole life has been dedicated to,” McGeough said. |
Great Ape Trust is certified by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums
