Laurie Root is retiring Friday after a career with South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks that’s spanned more than 35 years. She’s blazed a trail for women by pursuing her love of outdoors and education.
An open house retirement celebration for Root will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday at the Outdoor Campus–West in Rapid City. The public is invited.
Root is a naturalist with Game, Fish & Parks who educates adults and children to give them confidence about exploring the outdoors and learning skills such as hunting, fishing, hiking and more. She was also involved in developing the Outdoor Campus–West that opened in 2011.
“I’ve said all along that teaching people about the outdoors isn’t what I do for a living. It’s what I live to do,” Root said. “My main goal is getting people outdoors… and getting them past the fears of ‘I can’t do it’ or ‘something is going to attack me.’ It’s making them feel comfortable in the woods.”
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Teaching other women to be skilled and confident outdoors is especially satisfying for Root. Since 1995, she’s been involved in the Becoming an Outdoor Woman course, which educates women 18 and older about skills such as archery, fly fishing, birding, shooting, paddling, photography and more.
“I’ve been a mentor for a lot of women on their first deer hunts. I’ve helped several women get their first deer,” Root said. “I really enjoy teaching women and getting them fired up because they are the ones who get their kids outdoors. This way, if I teach them and they see their kids are capable, they will (take their kids outdoors). It’s exciting to me to have them doing it as a family.”
“Our focus (at the Outdoor Campus) is on getting families connected to nature, not just having little kids come and learn. We focus on families coming out and doing programs. We do fishing programs, hunting programs, shooting programs, archery. We also do some outdoor skill programs like hiking, snowshoeing, journaling, mountain lion education,” she said.
Root said her own love of the outdoors began in childhood. Her family spent weekends in the Black Hills exploring the woods, hiking and learning about nature.
Just a few decades ago, however, having a career in outdoor education seemed improbable. After graduating from high school, Root enrolled at South Dakota State University where she recalls a professor told her she “wouldn’t cut it in wildlife and fisheries.”
“That was back in a time when there weren’t women in that field,” Root said. “Women didn’t do that kind of thing.”
Opportunity presented itself when Cleghorn Springs State Fish Hatchery suddenly had multiple job openings during a busy time of year. Root was working in the Young Adult Conservation Corps and had skills the hatchery needed.
“One of our jobs (in the conservation corps) was working at the fish hatchery, so I knew the stocking places, how to drive the trucks and feed the fish and do all the jobs, so the hatchery hired two men and me. They didn’t think I would make it past the six-month probation period because women shouldn’t be doing that job, but they needed somebody who knew what was going on,” Root said. “They couldn’t get rid of me after that.”
From South Dakota and Oklahoma to Alaska and Alberta, Indigenous groups in the U.S. and Canada are leading efforts to restore bison across North America. AP Video: Emma H. Tobin. Additional credits to WWF US, Detroit Public Library, Library of Congress, Badlands National Park and Harlan Chun Guerue.
“I loved (the job) and I was going to prove them wrong,” Root chuckled. “I earned respect. Not very many people gave me a hard time. I gained a lot of respect throughout the whole department.”
Because Root had left college before earning a degree, she had to work at the hatchery for six years before she could apply for more advanced positions there.
“I started as a technician… and I didn’t even get to interview for any open positions,” Root said. “I had to have six years of experience to equal a four-year degree. I trained a lot of biologists and assistant managers before I finally got an interview and a job as a biologist.”
She stayed at Cleghorn for 13 years, working her way up to assistant manager and acting manager for six months. A new manager encouraged Root to finish her college degree.
“He said I should be working with people, not fish. He could see I was a people person,” said Root, who earned her bachelor’s degree in outdoor education at Black Hills State University.
When she graduated, there were no positions available so Root got her start with GF&P by doing contract work for five years, teaching programs in schools throughout West River. She also taught education programs in Custer for the U.S. Forest Service for six months. Root has worked full time for GF&P for 35 years.
“There is a lot more equality now. I see it could still be improved, obviously, but there are more women interested in the field. Now we have three women who are GF&P wildlife biologists just hired in the last few months, and that was unheard of to have that many women (decades ago),” Root said.
“It’s incredible how much it’s changed. Right now in our office, there are so many women biologists and there are many women in fisheries. It is amazing,” she said. “The women being hired now have no clue how difficult it was to get in 30 years ago.”
Shaping the future of outdoor education
When planning for the Outdoor Campus–West began, the GF&P department secretary asked Root to give input on the proposed campus.
“Because I had been doing all the school programs and there was a need for an outdoor campus in Rapid City… there was a big fundraising effort to build one out here,” Root said. “They asked me if I would fly to Sioux Falls and look at that campus and see what I liked and what I would change if one was in Rapid. I was pumped about that.”
“The biggest thing I wanted was a drain in the middle of a cement floor so we could process big game when we taught hunting classes. We weren’t teaching that kind of class… We didn’t get that part (at the time) but now we have an archery education building that does have a whole processing area, and we can process three deer at a time. I won — it just took a long time,” Root chuckled.
Since 1989, Root has conducted Project Wild workshops for thousands of preschool through high school teachers. The Project Wild curriculum uses wildlife and nature to teach math, science and English. She’s also been a hunting safety instructor since 1982. She personally is an avid hunter of a variety of large and small game and birds.
In 2010, Project Learning Tree named Root a National PLT Outstanding Educator honoree. Project Learning Tree praised Root for training more educators and recruiting more facilitators than anyone else in South Dakota PLT history. Project Learning Tree is an award-winning environmental education program for teachers, parents and community leaders who work with youths in preschool through high school.
Root ended her career this week by teaching a Flying Wild program in Spearfish. This is her 12th year of teaching Flying Wild to high school students at Black Hills Education Connection. Those students complete a six-week course with Root and then teach what they’ve learned to Spearfish third-graders. Flying Wild is a bird-themed program that teaches students about beaks, nesting, feeders, journaling, identifying birds and more.
Root hopes retirement brings opportunities to travel, camp with friends and continue learning. Root’s husband of 46 years died in 2022.
“I’ve enjoyed all the adventures. I’ve gotten to do so many things people never dream of. I’ve helped collar mountain lions and bighorn sheep and elk, and checked fish populations. I’m looking forward to the next chapter and seeing what the new journey’s going to be,” Root said. “I’m at a place in my life right now where I am starting over… I’m trying to find out who I am now without a job and on my own. I’m looking forward to learning more about me and the world around me.”
“Instead of teaching fishing, I’m going fishing and instead of teaching hunting, I get to go hunting. I’m looking forward to enjoying myself and learning more about nature. I’m a lifelong learner,” she said. “I love to learn and once I learn something, I want to share it.”
