Lapp awarded for Park conservation

She enjoyed working for Jack Potter. Now she’s the first person to win the award named after him.

Joyce Lapp was given the Jack Potter Glacier National Park Stewardship Award last week by Headwaters Montana, a local conservation organization.

Potter worked in Glacier National Park for more than 40 years, retiring as the division chief of science and resource management in Glacier last year. For many years, he was Lapp’s boss.

“If you had a good idea, he’d let you run with it,” Lapp said.

Lapp’s retired earlier this year, her own tenure in Glacier spanned 30 years. She’s a Flathead Valley native, graduated from Flathead High School and went to Flathead Valley Community College when it was holding classes in the KM Building in Kalispell.

She went onto study at Montana State University and the University of Hawaii, garnering two degrees — one in plant science, the other in soil science.

She started working in Glacier in the early 1980s as a seasonal employee and later became a park ranger specializing in natural resource management. She ended her career as a park ecologist, heading up the Park’s native plant and restoration program.

“The job was whatever I made it,” she said,

And Lapp made it something special. She established the Park’s native plant nursery. Set up volunteer programs so people could help out. She also reached out to area schools, including students from the Blackfeet and Flathead Reservations. She started native plant nurseries in Columbia Falls and Browning schools. The innovation continued with a program called STARS (Students Taking Action for Restoration and Stewardship).

She also started the Peace Park Garden in Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada.

“Working with the kids was great,” she said. “I loved all those partnerships. They were challenging, but rewarding.”

Throughout her career, Joyce had far-ranging influence on the science of restoration, from collection and propagation of plant materials to planting, monitoring, and doing outreach to other Park resource managers, other agencies, and Park visitors on the science and the art of restoration.

Some plant restoration programs relied on the kindness of Park visitors. When doing plantings in the backcountry, she’d have crews leave out a watering can, imploring visitors at backcountry camps to water the new plants and trees so they would survive.

“Over the years we never lost a watering can,” she said.

Lapp often saw the fruits of her labor.

“There are trees where I collected the seeds and planted that are now taller than I am,” she said.

“Joyce is a true leader,” said Dave Hadden, director of Headwaters Montana. “She took an important Park native plant restoration program, including the nursery, and went far beyond the call of duty.”