Wetlands

Brian Hepworth receives Ducks Unlimited Excellence in Conservation Lifetime Career Achievement Award

People, passion and pride among the hallmarks of Hepworth's leadership

By Suzanne Joyce April 27, 2025

This past February, Brian Hepworth, Ducks Unlimited Canada’s former director of regional operations – prairie and boreal region, was awarded the prestigious Ducks Unlimited Excellence in Conservation Lifetime Career Achievement Award. This honour recognizes significant, long-term contributions to Ducks Unlimited’s mission of filling the skies with waterfowl today, tomorrow and forever.

Hepworth’s career with Ducks Unlimited Canada spanned over 33 years. He started as a field biologist and later served as manager of provincial operations (MPO) in Saskatchewan. The leap to MPO in 2012 was one of several pivotal career moments for Hepworth. “I still had my original offer of employment letter signed in 1991 by the MPO at the time, Doug Chekay. It was a powerful moment to realize that 20 years later, I now held that role, that that was me,” he recalls.

For the next 10 years as MPO, Hepworth led with humility and an appreciation of the talents of the people he worked with. He explains, “I always said my main role was to manage passion. I had a team of people who all held a shared goal to help the environment, it was a privilege to work with that passion and head it in the right direction and with the resources we had available at the time.”

With passion, comes determination and a fair amount of optimism. “I appreciated that we were always hungry to do more conservation work. Each new dollar on the table was met with resolve to put it to good use. There was never ‘I don’t think we can’; it was always ‘we’re going to try’.” For Hepworth, leadership meant taking that can-do attitude and helping shape it into approaches that delivered measurable conservation success in Saskatchewan and beyond.

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“I appreciated that we were always hungry to do more conservation work. Each new dollar on the table was met with resolve to put it to good use. There was never ‘I don’t think we can’; it was always ‘we’re going to try’.”

Brian Hepworth

Regional leadership, continental impact

For two years, and just prior to retirement, Hepworth played a pivotal role in national leadership, in his role of director of regional operations. “Each additional career opportunity presented a new challenge over time. It was a privilege to have a front-row seat to what was happening in conservation elsewhere in North America, to see parallels in the challenges and opportunities and bring nuggets of information back to our own operations on the Prairies,” he says.

Throughout his career, Hepworth’s strategic vision was instrumental in establishing new conservation initiatives and fostering collaboration between Ducks Unlimited Canada and key partners on the landscape, including agricultural producers, Indigenous communities, and other stakeholders. He recognized the fundamental importance to the organization’s success of building relationships and “bringing people in the door.”

Hepworth’s focus on people played a crucial role in shaping him into the influential leader, mentor, and conservationist he became. He speaks fondly (perhaps, especially so) of off-work hours spent with colleagues on business trips and field tours that were “critically important to building a team.”

Now enjoying retirement and reflecting with gratitude on an exemplary career, it’s people that remain at the heart of Hepworth’s own measure of a life well-lived and a job well-done.

“I really hope that I’ve helped others be successful,” he says.

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Wetlands

Brian Hepworth receives Ducks Unlimited Excellence in Conservation Lifetime Career Achievement Award

People, passion and pride among the hallmarks of Hepworth's leadership

Regional leadership, continental impact

Looking for a career in conservation?

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