Northwoods native with Alaska experience joins River News and Times

You may have noticed a new byline in the newspaper over the last few weeks. That’s because a new reporter has joined the staff of The Lakeland Times and The Northwoods River News. 

Blake Richard graduated Chequamegon High School in Park Falls in 2020 and earned his Bachelor’s degree from Northland College in Ashland in 2024.

He studied natural resources with a dual emphasis of fisheries and wildlife and ecological restoration. That led Richard to work in Alaska during the summers for Ducks Unlimited and then the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife after graduation. While Richard, who’s 24, has already traveled across much of the country, his most recent journey begins closer to home. 

“I just feel like it’s a part of who I am and I like the Northwoods,” he said. “I’m definitely a homegrown kind of guy and the small town feel, I definitely chose to go to Northland College for that reason.”

Richard played basketball all four years in college and played baseball for three.

“I did quite a few sports growing up,” he said. “I wrestled for a year and played football for a little while too, and ran track. But yeah, when I got to high school, I narrowed it down pretty much to basketball and baseball.”

Richard also was a member of his high school’s trap shooting team. He competed in the high school state trap shooting tournament four years and the high school national trap shooting tournament three years. 

Another passion of Richard’s is hunting, ducks especially. His passion for hunting fueled his love for photography. 

Richard started working for Ducks Unlimited in Alaska in 2022.

“Well, altogether, the (Ducks Unlimited work) was part of the Dusky Canada Goose Artificial Nest Island Program, which is a collaboration between the forest service and Ducks Unlimited on the Copper River Delta in Alaska where the Dusky Canada Goose breeds, and there’s this big earthquake that uplifted the Delta like six feet and really dried it out,” he said. “So they had an encroachment of shrubs and … increased … predators on the (nesting) geese. So they designed these artificial nest islands to go out in the middle of ponds to try and deter … predators.”

Richard said he helped maintain some 350 artificial nests that summer and collected data. 

“But also during that first summer (in Alaska), I went out to Controller Bay, Alaska, which is a remote bay on the coast, and that was a study with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game that the forest service also partnered with, and that was a study on declining shorewood species.”

The work in Controller Bay continued and Richard returned to Alaska the next two summers to help with it.

Richard spent time in Barrow, Alaska as well, the northernmost town in the U.S., where he was able to see duck species he wouldn’t be able to see anywhere else, such as a Common Eider.

“After Barrow, I went to Washington (in 2024),” Richard said. “Which is where I was for 18 months before coming (back here). My official title was a natural resource specialist, but basically what I did was help manage pacific flyway waterfowl populations … and a lot of it was related to moist soil agriculture.”

He said his favorite memories of his time spent out west was being out in the wilderness. 

“But definitely the Controller Bay thing,” Richard said. “That’s probably like … my favorite place on earth and those three surveys I did were probably some of the most beneficial experiences for me too. In Barrow, we worked every day … and … work was like a form of recreation for me because I enjoyed it so much and I had my camera with me every day and was taking photos. It was a good balance and … that was another great experience too, just being able to work with endangered and threatened ducks.”

He decided to make the switch to newspapering for a few different reasons. One was wanting to be closer to home and the opportunity at the Times and River News presented itself. Another was he grew a passion for writing the summer he worked for Ducks Unlimited. He already had a passion for photography.

“When I was working for (Ducks Unlimited) in 2022, I had to write like a blog just about my experiences and stuff because there were no Ducks Unlimited employees where I was working in Alaska except for me,” Richard said. “So I was living in forest service housing and working with a bunch of forest service employees (and) wrote this blog to kind of update people back at (Ducks Unlimited) about what we were doing. But I know that I like to take pictures and I know that I like to write just from that experience, but also taking classes … in college, and being out in Washington, I definitely feel like I missed parts of home.”

It took Richard a month to drive back home.

Over the next month-and-a-half, he traveled around the country seeking out some of the coolest waterfowl experiences possible. 

“I drove through 15 states and lived out of my truck basically,” Richard said, noting there were stops to visit friends and family along the way. “ … In Missouri, I saw over a million snow geese at the Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge. That was probably like one of my favorite parts of the whole trip, and if I could recommend anything out of my whole trip to anybody, that would be it because that was just amazing.”

He said he looks forward to writing and shooting photos on a daily basis the most. 

“I never really thought I could make a career out of it and always thought I would just be … in the natural resources field,” Richard said. But yeah I’m mostly looking forward to giving it my all and seeing what happens.”

Trevor Greene may be reached via email at [email protected].