Outdoor Indiana, the bi-monthly magazine of the Indiana DNR, placed second in the nation among State-run conservation magazines at the Association for Conservation Information (ACI) conference this month.
ACI is a nonprofit organization of natural resources communicators. Members represent State, federal and Canadian wildlife conservation, parks and natural resource agencies, as well as private conservation organizations. The ACI annual awards contest recognizes work published during the previous calendar year (2018). First place this year went to South Carolina’s magazine. Last year, for its 2017 issues, Outdoor Indiana placed third, behind Montana and Texas.
The Indiana DNR submitted two issues from 2018, March/April and July/August. Members of the Division of Communications produce the bulk of the content. The staff for the issues submitted included Tara M. Wolf, editor; Marty Benson, managing editor; Erin Hiatt, graphic designer; Frank Oliver, photo editor; John Maxwell, photographer/writer; Jessica Sparger, business manager; and Amy L. Guyer, subscriptions manager, as well as former senior writer Nick Werner, who left the DNR last August.
Each issue also includes contributors from other DNR divisions. These contributors for the two issues submitted were DNR director Cameron Clark; Roger Hedge, Rich Dunbar and Teresa Clark, Nature Preserves; Megan Abraham, Entomology & Plant Pathology; Phil Marshall, Forestry; Brian Breidert (retired) and Craig Jansen, Fish & Wildlife; and Brad Kessons and Mariah Mobley, State Parks.
Non-DNR contributors included George Ironstrack and Cameron Shriver of the Myaamia Center at Miami University (Ohio), who co-wrote a feature article for the July/August issue. Reader photo contributors were Mark Randall, Fishers; Lisa Judge, Lafayette; Marilou Parsons, Lawrence County; and Richard Hammer, Frankfort.
Werner earned first place in the “Magazine Destination, Historical or Cultural Article” category for his article “Retracing the Buffalo Trace,” which ran in the July/August issue. Hiatt did the design. Maxwell and Oliver did the photography, and Benson did the editing.
Outdoor Indiana publishes six times a year. Subscriptions are $15 for one year (six issues, a 27 percent savings) and $28 for two years (12 issues, a 42 percent savings). Subscribe at OutdoorIndiana.org or by calling 317-233-3046.