Current chairman Mark Lehman was re-elected and Joe Murnane was pegged to his first term on the board of directors of the Crawford County Conservation District during the group’s annual meeting Saturday at Girard High School.
Murnane, of rural Girard, will fill the board seat of Roy Niederklein, whose term expired this year.
This was the 62nd annual meeting of the Conservation District membership. And the local district is in doing better than other districts around the state, Lehman said in his opening remarks.
“We’re in good financial shape here in the district,” Lehman told the membership. “I go to state meetings and some districts don’t even have enough money to have an office going.”
The highlight of the evening was the presentation of awards honoring Crawford County producers for their efforts at conserving and maintaining the land. Dean Stites, County Extension Agent, and Claudia Ausemus, representing First National Bank of Girard, presented the Kansas Bankers Conservation Award and the Continued Conservation Award.
The Kansas Bankers Award is a first-time recognition of conservation practices, which are an on-going process, Stites said. Sponsored by the Kansas Bankers Association, recipients are selected by a local county committee based on conservation efforts to day.
This year’s Bankers Award recipients were  Colleen and Jim Huff of rural McCune.
“We’re honoring just a very nice farm family,” said Stites, who chaired the Crawford County selection committee.
Jim Huff taught in West Mineral and Cherokee Elementary schools and at the community college level before moving to full-time production agriculture with his father, Paul Huff. Colleen Huff still teaches special needs students in U.S.D. 247 at the Cherokee Attendance Center.
Over the years, Huff has been active in conservation efforts on land he owns. He’s also helped construct terracing and waterway projects on land he rents, doing most of the work to get those practices in place, Stites said.
The second award of the evening, the Continued Conservation Award, recognizes recipients for long-term conservation efforts. This year’s award went to Charles and Kathryn Shanholtzer of McCune.
“Looking through the names of people who’ve won this award in the past, a lot of them are still in farming,” Stites said. “That’s the thing about conservation work .
“It’s something you have to keep plugging away at. This is a way of honoring people who’ve been at this for a lot of years.”
In order to qualify for the Continued Conservation Award, recipients must have been involved in conservation practices for a minimum of 15 years and be a prior winner of the Kansas Bankers Award. The Shanholtzers won the Bankers Award in 1989, Stites said.
The final award of the evening, the Grassland Conservation Award, was presented to John W. Tersinar and Tersinar Farms of rural Farlington. Tersinar Farms runs a cow-calf operation and backgrounds calves. The Tersinar family is a past winner of the Commercial Producer of the Year Award from the Heartland Limousin Association.