Executive Director
mark@tnike.com

Mr. Campen began working for the league in the fall of 2001. His job description includes wildlife management and riparian zone assessment. Helping public entities and private landowners, he works to preserve, conserve, manipulate and create wildlife habitats through land management planning and implementation. Mr. Campen helps with education programs and water quality surveys such as the "Birds and the Trees" program and IBI activities, respectively. Also, consistently monitoring and working to address silt, sewage, trash and debris in Knoxville's waterways is a major part of his work.
    Selected project experience
  • UT Ornithological Research, Big Sandy, TN. Commissioned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, UT's crew initiated a five-year research project studying the effects of habitat manipulation on nesting forest interior birds in the Big Sandy unit of the Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge.
  • Williams Creek Restoration, TN. As part of a TN EPA 319, non-point source grant funding, conducted research to help develop project scoping and worked as part of initiation team to address trash, debris and other impacts.
  • Fort Loudoun Shoreline Restoration Project, TN.The project focuses on the use of biostabilization methods to harden shoreline for landowners in living on the Fort Loudoun Reservoir.
  • No Trash Zone, TN. In cooperation with the City Of Knoxville the league maintains the riverfront from the South Knoxville Bridge/James White Pkwy, down river to the Alcoa Bridge. The fulltime effort has been responsible for over one thousand bags of trash collect from the river.
  • Turkey Creek Wetland Park, TN. As part of the league's responsibility holding the conservation easement, Mr. Campen is to make sure impacts to the wetland, and therefore the watersehed above, are monitored and kept to a minimum. Conducting meetings witht he Turkey Creek Wetland Advisory Committee ensures public participation and input from the local science community. Leading wetland walking tours, bird watching field trips and invasive plant removal activities are continual.

    Expertise
    Wildlife Management Planning
    Identifying invasive, nonnative flora (Eastern US)
    Riparian Zone Assessment and Stabilization
    Wildlife and Nature Photography


    Training and Certificates
    TVA University, Certified Sawyer
    TDEC Fundamentals of Erosion Prevention and Sediment Control, May 2002
    Land, Air, Water Task Force Member, Nine Counties One Vision and the French Broad Conservation Corridor Study
    City of Knoxville Greenways Committee Associate
    Conservation Committee Chair and member, Knoxville Chapeter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society
    Fish and Wildlife Resource Committee and Life Member, Izaak Walton League of America


    Education
    AS, Agricultural Sciences, Pellissippi State Technical Community College
    BS, Wildlife and Fisheries; minor in Forestry, University of Tennessee