Erie County's John Blakeman wins conservation honor

MILAN TWP. — John Blakeman has taught science and worked with raptors such as red-tailed hawks and bald eagles and done controlled burns to restore native prairie grass.He has directed the restoration of thousands of acres of tall grass prairie at NASA Plum Brook Station and worked as a consultant to restore prairies in other locations.The efforts from Blakeman, 69, a Milan Township resident, have now received state recognition. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has just named Blakeman to the Ohio Natural Resources Hall of Fame. It's the state's top conservation honor.Blakeman received the award Thursday at Malabar Farm, an Ohio state park that was the former home of writer Louis Bromfield and the place where actors Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall got married in 1945. Dean Sheldon Jr., the former owner of the Sheldon Marsh State Nature Preserve in Huron, nominated Blakeman.Blakeman said he appreciates the honor. Previously, it has gone to "some really top notch conservation people," he said.Kathie Mueller, an environmental activist in Erie County, said the honor is well-deserved."I just think it's phenomenal, with all that John has done for years," she said.Blakeman's award and the recently concluded Healing Our Waters — Great Lakes Coalition convention held last week at Cedar Point is putting Erie County on the map as a center of conservation, Mueller said."Erie County is leading the way," she said.Blakeman was born in Sandusky and grew up in Fremont, graduating from Fremont Ross in 1966. In 1970, he graduated from Bowling Green State University with an education degree with a biology major. Bowling Green students are known as the "Falcons," but while he was a BGSU student Blakeman actually trained and displayed a live prairie falcon.He taught science in the Perkins Schools from 1970 to 2000, first at a middle school and then in high school. He was named the state's top biology teacher in the 1980s.Blakeman used to take his red-tailed hawk to class."They all got to pet it and take pictures," he said.After retiring as a teacher, Blakeman founded Meadow Environments LLC. He designs and plants prairie landscapes.One of his specialties is setting prairies on fire in controlled burns, as Native Americans did for thousands of years, a skill he has deployed in restoring 3,000 acres at NASA Plum Brook Station to tall grass prairie.Blakeman says he tells people he has the strangest job in the history of the space agency."I am their only paid pyromaniac," he said. (He's an "Ohio certified prescribed fire manager," certified by the Ohio Division of Forestry and Ohio EPA.)"Our fires are just exactly as the Native Americans burned them," Blakeman said.The fires cooked chiggers and ticks, making the environment livable for the tribes, and also concentrated fleeing game together, he said."They knew exactly what they were doing," he said.Blakeman also gives illustrated lectures on two periods of Plum Brook history — when the ordnance works there produced explosives during World War II, and on the NASA years.He's working on his memoir, "Of Hawks, Prairies and People: A Life in Science."John Blakeman, right, listens at ODNR director James Zehringer inducts Blakeman into the Ohio Natural Resources Hall of Fame in a ceremony at Malabar Farm last week. John Blakeman's profile photo on Facebook (with a friend.)