A man known as "Woody the Singing Forester" was posthumously inducted into the Missouri Conservation Hall of Fame this month.
Herschel Bledsoe was from Jefferson City and began his career as a towerman and firefighter with Missouri Department of Conservation in 1942. He served in the department's forestry division before he was promoted to a new assignment of sharing forestry conservation in 1951.
Per MDC, Bledsoe took a "mobile motion picture unit" to rural schools across Missouri to show conservation films as well as lecture on wildlife and forestry conservation. Along with those lectures and films, Bledsoe would bring along his guitar and sing about the benefits of conservation.