A Big Tree is Down - Tribute to Erv Klaas

Erv Klaas Celebration of Life

The Celebration of Life service for Erv Klaas will be at the Fellowship on Saturday, July 27th, at 2:00 pm (Zoom also available). Erv passed away earlier this month; his obituary is available here.

Given Erv's community engagement and presence, we are anticipating high attendance at the service. Overflow seating will be in the Fireside Room and Room 3. Overflow parking will be in ISU's Lot 11 (across from the ISU cemetery) with shuttle provided to/from the Fellowship. Carpooling and early arrival is encouraged.

“A Big Tree is down….”

This line from a song by Minnesota songwriter and author, Doug Wood, talks about the loss of “big trees” in the human conservation community. We lost another one this past week.  In the early morning hours of July 6, Dr. Erwin Klaas passed from this life having served this Earth and conservation for 88 years.  

Erv was well-known and respected by many in the Ames community, as well as conservationists state-wide. For us in Friends of Ada Hayden Heritage Park (FAHHP), he was especially important. He founded this organization in 2010 and served as President through 2018. His guidance and incredible energy led to our hiring summer interns and to summer and fall interpretive programs at the park.  In fact, he has led a number of those free community events, especially highlighting his continuing interest and research on damselflies and dragonflies at the Park, as well as other sessions.  His empathy with other Ames citizens who have mobility challenges led to our annual golf cart tours for mobility impaired adults.  He co-authored the Management Plan for the Park, the document that guides the Parks and Recreation Department in the challenging management of this wild park, one that requires different techniques than those of other Ames city parks.

More importantly, though, he was a critical voice and worker for this park from the very beginning. Many Ames people were involved in making this place a gem of a public park instead of another housing development, convincing the voters in 2001 to pass a bond issue for the park by a record 86 percent! But few people were as important as Erv Klaas. He and his colleagues did the original vegetation surveys in the park, discovering remnants of prairie and savanna communities in what had been an industrial gravel mining site for nearly 50 years. He discovered Ada Hayden’s family connection to part of the property and succeeded in getting the park named after her. Erv suggested the “Faces in the Stones” in the park to honor Dr. Hayden and 8 other important Iowa conservationists, albeit posthumously. We in FAHHP were able to honor Erv while he was still with us and still active on the Board, placing his image on a 10th rock in a public outdoor ceremony in 2020. It is likely that, without Erv Klaas, this park would not exist and would certainly not have the wild character of wetlands, prairies, and savannas that it has today. His energy and voice and vision are very much alive in this park.

Erv’s legacy, however, goes well beyond this park and the City of Ames. Dr. Klaas distinguished himself in many ways.  He joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1971 as a research wildlife biologist at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland where he conducted research on the effects of DDT on birds. It was this pioneering research that helped lead to the national ban on the use of DDT in 1973.  Erv came to Iowa State in 1975 and served as Professor of Animal Ecology and Leader of the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit until he retired on December 31, 1999.  (That program was founded by Ding Darling and the first Leader was Paul Errington, a graduate student of Aldo Leopold.  All three of those distinguished Iowans have stones at the park, along with Erv’s.)  At Iowa State, Dr. Klaas guided graduate students on pesticide impacts on wildlife, waterfowl energetics and ecology, and wild turkey survival and habitat analysis.  As a U.S. F & W employee, he helped research and design what became the Neil Smith National Wildlife Refuge near Prairie City, Iowa.  He was appointed Professor Emeritus of Animal Ecology when he retired from ISU in 1999.  In 2001, fellow wildlife professionals in the Iowa Chapter of The Wildlife Society elected him to their prestigious Iowa Hall of Fame. The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation awarded him the Hagie Award for service to conservation in 2008.

Erv has taught me what it means to be called a “citizen”. If we want to live in a community where wild places and wild things are valued, we must involve ourselves in those efforts. Just being a community member is not enough; to sit back and complain is not enough. If we want change, we must act, become involved, speak out, speak up, give of our energy and time and idea and, if you are able, money. Erv lived that in so many ways: from this park, to being on the Boards of Prairie Rivers of Iowa and Ioway Creek Watershed Management Authority, to founding the Ames Reads Leopold celebration, to being Asst. Commissioner for the Soil and Water Conservation District, to founding the Ames Climate Action Team, and to so much more. For me, Erv Klaas has been the model for what an involved citizen is, urging us all to become our better selves and contribute to a better community.

We will miss Erv immensely, but his memory and the lessons he taught us will live on.  Rest well and in peace, my friend. Your legacy will carry on.

Jim Pease, President, Friends of Ada Hayden Heritage Park, July 8, 2024.

NOTE: Services for Erv will take place Saturday, July 27, 2024 at 2 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 1015 N. Hyland in Ames.