John Nelson Harris of Groveland, Fla., was awarded first place in the 2016 Louisiana Waterfowl Conservation Stamp competition sponsored by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF). The contest determines the image to be used on what is commonly known as the Louisiana Duck Stamp.
Harris has a long history of duck stamp contest wins, taking the Florida Duck Stamp contest three times before it was disbanded in 2003, and most recently winning the California Duck Stamp contest in 2014. He was the first runner-up in the 1998 Federal Duck Stamp Contest and has been featured on two Canadian duck stamps. Harris is an artist preparator at Epcot and an at-large member of the Lake County Water Authority. He has competed and scored as high as 3rd in recent years before winning this year’s contest.
Second place went to Broderick Crawford of Clayton, Ga. Crawford won the 2014 California Upland Game Bird Stamp contest and has placed in the top 10 in the federal duck stamp contest as well as many state duck stamp contests. Larry Wilburn of Dayton, Texas, was the third place artist.
“The state duck stamp competition continues to attract high quality artwork, " said LDWF Waterfowl Study Leader Larry Reynolds. “For the second year, the contest specified a focus species, and this year it was gadwall. I was told that the difficulty in painting the subtle beauty of gadwalls may have contributed to our low number of entries, but no species is more important to Louisiana duck hunters, and no species is more dependent on Louisiana’s coastal marsh habitat.”
Of the 11 entries in the 2016 contest, six came from Louisiana artists, and one each from Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Texas and Florida.
The Louisiana Waterfowl Conservation Stamp program was established in 1988 by the Louisiana Legislature to generate revenue for conservation and enhancement of state wetlands, benefitting migratory waterfowl overwintering in Louisiana. This program has generated over $12 million for wetland conservation in Louisiana since 1989, with over $450,000 from last year’s stamp/license sales alone.
The 2016 stamp, featuring Harris’ work, is expected to go on sale June 1, 2016. The artist will retain the original artwork and will have reproduction rights to the image for prints and other commodities after LDWF has used the image to produce the stamps.
Judges for the competition were Tony Bernard, Dr. Jim Bergan, Randy Caminita, Jay Owen and Dr. Kevin Ringelman. Bernard is a well known Lafayette artist who is the winner of the 2007 and 2014 LA Duck Stamp contests; Bergan is the director of Freshwater and Wetland Conservation for the The Nature Conservancy; Caminita is a professional wildlife artist from Folsum; Owen is the current State Chairman for Ducks Unlimited; and Ringelman is a professor of Wildlife Ecology at the School of Renewable Natural Resources at LSU.
For more information, contact Larry Reynolds at lreynolds@wlf.la.gov or 225-765-0456.