Lawhern Elected President of IHEA

Lawhern elected president of International Hunter Education Assn.

MADISON -- For the second time in his 20-year career with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Hunter Education Administrator Tim Lawhern has been elected president of the International Hunter Education Association.

“It is significant for Wisconsin,” said DNR Secretary Matt Frank of Lawhern’s unanimous election to lead the 37-year-old association whose members include New Zealand, Peru, Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Canada and the United States. “It shows we have a tremendously respected program with good oversight and leadership since Day One.”

A Tennessee native hired as a DNR game warden before being named hunter education administrator in 1994, Lawhern is the only member of the international association to be elected president twice. It is the professional association for 67 state and provincial wildlife conservation agencies and 70,000 volunteer instructors.

The Denver, Colo.-based international association develops curriculum standards and training methods, hosts a national academy for hunting incident investigations, and an academy for administrators among its varied duty list.

Lawhern said the two biggest challenges he wants to tackle during his two-year term as president involve revamping the association’s communications practices and adopting standards for hunter education for basic and advanced training to be used worldwide.

“The worldwide trend of youth involvement (in hunting) is down,” Lawhern said, adding the association must revamp its communications to involve social networking and other electronic methods to reach today’s youth. “We will focus on communications and relationship-building.”
A benefit of worldwide standards for training will mean reciprocity -- meaning a student who completes a course in one jurisdiction will be allowed to hunt in any of the other IHEA member jurisdictions.  For example, the course in Peru will be recognized under Wisconsin requirements.

One big reason Lawhern was asked by the association’s members to seek the office for a second time is the fact there are 5,000 volunteer hunter education instructors in Wisconsin.

“Wisconsin is blessed to have the greatest and largest volunteer instructor corps for hunter education in the world,” Lawhern said.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Tim Lawhern, DNR Hunter Education Administrator - (608) 266-1317