RI teacher wins environmental stewardship award

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By Alma Gaul | Monday, August 28, 2006 11:49 PM CDT | () comments

Photo by John Schultz/QUAD-CITY TIMES Quad-City naturalist Bob Motz reacts to a question about butterflies as he puts monarch caterpillars into jars for kids to take home and watch. The caterpillars will turn into chrysalises and then butterflies. “A marvelous life cycle to watch,” says Motz, who presented butterfly workshops over the weekend at the Putnam Museum, Davenport.

Ask Bob Motz a question about monarch butterflies or bald eagles or forest wildflowers, and he will drop everything he is doing and gently and enthusiastically explain what he knows about these subjects, which is considerable.

But if he had his druthers, he’d take this a step further.

Instead of telling you about monarchs, he’d find you a tiny caterpillar and a milkweed leaf and let you watch the caterpillar grow. He’d invite you into his car and drive you out to Rock Island’s Sunset Marina where, through spotting scopes, you’d be able to see the nostrils in the eagles’ beaks. And he’d take you on a trail through Black Hawk State Historic Site, stopping to identify bloodroot or trillium.

Motz, 71, is a teacher, profoundly dedicated to sharing the wonders of the natural world. He taught biology for 36 years at Rock Island High School and after his retirement in 1994, taught and advised student teachers at Augustana College, Rock Island. He currently instructs summer College for Kids genetics classes at Moline’s Black Hawk College and leads nature programs for both children and adults, often about three a week.

Hands-on experience is his forte. His hope is that others will develop the same appreciation and love for the environment that he has, because it is only then that they will work to protect and promote it, he says.

“The average child today spends 55 hours a week with technology — TV, Gameboys, the Internet,” he explains. “They don’t spend as much time in the outdoors. On wildflower walks, I get a surprising number of kids who have never been in a forest before. With kids not being exposed to nature, it’s harder to have them care about planet Earth. Unless we have people who really care, we will not save our natural areas.”

For this championing of the environment, Motz on Saturday received the Putnam Museum and IMAX Theatre’s 2006 Environmental Stewardship Award, a distinction that honors an individual, organization or business that serves as a model for protecting and caring for the environment in the Quad-Cities region.

Coincidentally, the award presentation was sandwiched between two butterfly workshops Motz was conducting — workshops that drew more registrations than the Putnam had slots for.

Motz was nominated for the honor by Joe Taylor, president and chief executive officer of the Quad-City Convention and Visitors Bureau, who cited Motz’s teaching, his nearly 15 years of conducting bald eagle safaris for Quad-City residents and out-of-town visitors, and his work as co-founder of the Citizens to Preserve Black Hawk Park.

Motz helped mobilize the group in the early 1970s when it looked as though a four-lane expressway was going to be built through Black Hawk, a move that would have caused untold damage to the centuries-old woods, the quiet and the wildlife patterns.

The group was ultimately successful in stopping the road and has remained active as a support group for the park, now called the Black Hawk State Historic Site. Motz serves on the group’s board and works as a volunteer on various projects, including removing invasive plant species that threaten to squeeze out the native vegetation.

“Motz was an easy choice for the award,” Sally Hinz, chief operating officer of the Putnam, says. “His long and continuous history of service is such a main thread in his life and connection to others.”

Background

Motz is a Rock Island native who got his love of nature from his dad, a dentist. When Bob was in fifth grade, his dad piled him into their Nash Rambler, and they drove all the way to Tennessee, collecting butterflies and sleeping in the car at night.

And Motz passed on the favor when he became a dad.

He and his late wife Elsa, whom he met in Denmark when he was a college student, took their three children on vacations to all 50 states, tent-camping wherever they could. They once camped for seven weeks straight in the shadow of Colorado’s Long’s Peak, where they would sit around the campfire telling stories.

Another life influence was George McMaster, Motz’s high school biology teacher. And Motz returned that favor years later when he taught McMaster’s son … and all the other sons and daughters who passed through his classrooms.

“I had him as a senior in high school, and he turned me into an environmentalist,” says Robert Hingstrum, a retired Moline High School teacher from Orion, Ill. Significantly, this was in the early 1960s when environmentalism had not yet received much attention.

Janet Moline says she was lucky to have Motz as her student-teacher adviser and to work with him now as a fellow Black Hawk park supporter.

“Part of Bob’s strength is to see what is good in life,” Moline says. “Bob knows as much as anybody that there are problems, but you take the good and you make the most of it. He has faith that the world is good and that what’s good is worth protecting.”

Motz practices what he preaches at his own home, a six-acre, mostly wooded site that sits on a bluff overlooking Blackhawk Road and that has been certified as a Backyard Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation.

In addition to the oaks, there are a prairie planting and two ponds that Motz installed to provide water for wildlife, including birds, raccoons, deer, opossums, chipmunks and wild turkeys.

Motz counts as his two proudest accomplishments his ability to influence lives for the love of nature, and his children.

“Those are the two key things,” he says. “And I’m not planning on stopping at this point.”

About Bob Motz

Family: Children are Lisa Motz-Storey, an ordained minister who serves with a hospice in Denver and is working to establish hospice care in the African country of Tanzania; Bill, an animation writer and producer for Disney in Burbank, Calif.; and Sonja Melching, a full-time mom in LaDera Ranch, Calif. Motz has six grandchildren. His beloved wife Elsa died unexpectedly two years ago when they were vacationing in the Rockies.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in English from Knox College, Galesburg, Ill.; a master’s degree in secondary education and administration from Bradley University, Peoria, Ill.; a master’s degree in biology from Humboldt State University, Arcata, Calif., and graduate work at the University of Iowa.

Travels: In addition to visiting all 50 states with his wife and children when the family was young, Motz enjoys destinations with natural interest.

He has traveled to central Mexico to witness the annual migration of the monarch butterflies and to the Galapagos Islands, where he hiked to the top of a volcanic crater rim to see giant tortoises. “It is a five-hour ascent, mostly at a 45-degree angle with loose gravel,” he says. “But it is the only way to see the tortoises in the wild. I saw 200 of them.”

He also has visited Denali National Park in Alaska and has been on an African safari.

Favorite quote: From writer Mary Austin: “The more we appreciate what we see, the more we see what we appreciate.”

What else?: For 16 years Motz was varsity tennis coach at Rock Island High School, and he is a member of the Illinois High School Tennis Coaches Hall of Fame. He also has won top awards at the former Symphony in Bloom flower show for his bonsai exhibits; bonsai is the art of dwarfing and shaping trees in shallow pots.

Honors: King of the 61st annual Mardi Gras Ball, a fundraiser of the Junior Board of Rock Island; the Illinois Governor’s Award for his contributions and leadership on Black Hawk Park; Rock Island Citizen of the Year in Education; and Rock Island Rotary Distinguished Service Award

What else?: For 16 years Motz was varsity tennis coach at Rock Island High School, and he is a member of the Illinois High School Tennis Coaches Hall of Fame. He also has won top awards at the former Symphony in Bloom flower show for his bonsai exhibits; bonsai is the art of dwarfing and shaping trees in shallow pots.

Alma Gaul can be contacted at (563) 383-2324 or agaul@qctimes.com.