IMPRINT, the Bell Museum's quarterly magazine for members, offers stories of scientific adventure and discovery, insight into today's rapid environmental changes, updates on museum programs and exhibits, and fun activities for kids. IMPRINT is published quarterly and is available as a benefit of Bell Museum membership.

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by Kate Tyler

Hiking along Big Bear Creek near his home in a small central Iowa town, young Walter "Breck" Breckenridge, still in grammar school, was dazzled one day by the colorful monarchs and painted ladies he saw fluttering about a field of clover. The butterflies were short-lived, as Breck soon learned from a thick entomology book supplied by his parents—but their tiny and splendid wings nonetheless propelled Breck into a singularly productive love affair with the natural world that spanned most of the 20th century and continues into the 21st.

Breck, as he is called by almost everyone, went from butterflies to birds and eventually to reptiles and mammals. He became Minnesota's leading ornithologist, one of the region's best-known natural historians, and a scientific author, pioneering filmmaker, and prolific wildlife artist. From 1926 to 1969, he put his mark on nearly every aspect of the Bell Museum of Natural History, first as a preparator of wildlife specimens, later as an exhibits curator, and from 1946 to 1969, as museum director.

"He's a very eclectic man, both a scientist and an artist, and someone with a truly extraordinary respect and a sort of sacredness about the environment," says longtime friend Bob Janssen, author of Birds in Minnesota (1987, University of Minnesota Press). "He has been a conservation pioneer who has introduced tens of thousands of people to the beauty of wildlife and the importance of wildlife conservation."

Breck's influence is still much in evidence at the Bell, where dioramas he constructed even 60 years ago continue to draw museum goers. But his impact extends well beyond the University campus. In Minnesota, Breck's scientific work and advocacy led to the creation of the state Scientific and Natural Areas Program and to the establishment of parks, wetlands, and wildlife areas including Nerstrand Woods State Park, the Spring Brook Nature Center, and the University's own Cedar Creek Natural History Area. His encyclopaedic knowledge of winged, scaled, and four-legged creatures, his unceasing fascination with them, and his artistic talent helped create and illustrate definitive reference works on birds and reptiles as well as evocative oils and watercolors that captured the character and habits of osprey, prairie falcons, Canadian geese, and many other birds with astonishing acuity.

Both locally at his Sunday afternoon film-and-lecture events at the Bell and nationally on tours for the Audubon Society, Breck has made the eyes of countless adults and children widen with wonder at the visual splendor, diversity, and vitality of nature. His pioneering wildlife films, among the first ever shown on public television, ushered in the modern era of nature filmmaking that continues today with Discovery channel shows and National Geographic specials. And more recently, his volunteer activities, lectures, and pithy op-ed pieces on behalf of conservationist causes have focused public attention on the threats to the ecosystem posed by the ever-expanding human species.

Learn more about Walter Breckenridge—and the Bell Museum's current scientific expeditions—in the latest issue of IMPRINT, the Bell Museum's quarterly magazine for members.