SPRINGDALE — Schelly Corry has found her new habitat. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission on Wednesday announced Corry as director of the J.B. and Johnelle Hunt Family Ozark Highlands Nature Center.
She starts Monday.
The 61-acre complex on North 40th Street will include a 27,000-square-foot exhibit hall and classrooms, outdoor archery range, a northern bobwhite education pavilion and walking and biking trails.
Construction of the three main structures of the center nears completion, said Eric Maynard, the commission’s assistant chief of education. He expects exhibit installation in August and an opening date “sometime between September and Christmas.”
Corry comes to Northwest Arkansas with 29 years in education and exhibit planning and management, from her first job at Heard Natural Science Museum in McKinney, Texas, to her latest as vice president of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. She also was the executive director at the Cook Museum of Natural Science in Decatur, Ala., her home state.
“Alabama has some really wonderful, beautiful places, but I think Arkansas has got them beat on some things,” said the ardent outdoorswoman.
Corry said she will feel her role is successful if she and her staff can encourage growth in outdoor activities with area residents.
“I want people to say, ‘Wow! I never knew this,’ or ‘Now, I’ve got to get outside to do this,’” she said. “People have grown away from the outdoors in generations. But now there are studies that show us how valuable time in the outdoors is —physically, mentally and emotionally — in making people’s lives better.”
The $18 million center is being paid for by Game and Fish, plus private donations and grants through an ongoing drive by the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation.
The drive has raised about $7 million, said Deke Whit-beck, foundation president. It includes a $5 million donation from Johnelle Hunt of Springdale.
The Walton Family Foundation donated $980,000 last year to help build the center.
Springdale’s City Council added to its 2018 bond projects widening 40th from Falcon Avenue north to the bridge over Spring Creek.
The city will use $1.27 million from the trails portion of its yearly budget money to extend the Spring Creek Trail for one half mile. The new portion will run from the Thunder-chicken trail head to 40th. The project should be completed within a year, said Ryan Carr, a senior project manager in the city’s engineering department.
In a different phase of construction, a trail from 40th to the Razorback Greenway will be paid with money from a Transportation Alternative Program grant from the Arkansas Department of Transportation, he said.
Chris Colclasure, deputy director of the commission, said Wednesday more than 100,000 school-age children live within driving distance of the center — and that number increases every year.
“The blend of indoor classrooms and outdoor learning will help us bridge that gap for many of today’s youth who spend much of their time indoors, further disconnecting them from the natural world,” Colclasure said.
The exhibit hall will feature a 2,000-gallon aquarium, a spelunking adventure through a reproduction of an Ozark cave and more.
Maynard said the exhibit hall also will offer electronic and printed visitor information for area attractions related to the exhibits.
“It might be Beaver Lake, or SWEPCO lake or the Kings River,” Maynard said.
Maynard said both staff and wildlife will need to get settled in the new center before it opens.
“We’ll need to set up terrariums and find native snakes, lizards and frogs for them. Then those animals will have to get acclimated to their new surroundings,” he said.
He said the staff will gather species only from healthy local populations that can be easily found.
“We might find a lizard in a fence row,” he explained.
The Hunt nature center will focus on the wildlife, habitats and land forms unique to Northwest Arkansas, Maynard said. The state’s eight other nature centers highlight the outdoors in their area of the state, including the Mississippi River delta near Pine Bluff, Blackland Prairie in Hempstead County and elk habitat in Newton County.
Maynard said the cave exhibit will explain features and provide information about the karst limestone and dolomite rock, which form the caves; cave features such as stalactites and flow stone; and cave creatures such as crickets and the endangered Ozark blind cave fish.
Maynard, who oversees all of the commission’s nature centers, said the cave exhibit is his favorite.
The staff also needs to develop the center’s programming — and what that will be in face of the covid-19 breakout, he said. The center staff will determine plans for school visits, rangers in the classroom and online options.
Laurinda Joenks can be reached by email at joenks@nwadg.com or on Twitter @NWALaurinda.
