About Our Founder

Roger Alink, founder and current Director of Wildlife West, was raised on a farm in Minnesota. Living on a quarter-section (160 acres) of land, his family raised crops and livestock including pigs, geese, chickens, sheep, and cattle. Roger credits his upbringing for instilling many of the values he holds most important today. Roger grew up without a TV, and has never owned one.

Roger was the first in his extended family to obtain Bachelor's and Master's degrees. He started college at Minnesota Junior College, and completed his BS in Industrial Education and MS in Outdoor Recreation at the University of New Mexico. While he was in college, Roger and his friends would visit elementary schools and entertain the children with magic shows and plays, including some unique takes on favorite fairy tales.

As a teacher, Roger worked for 10 years at Valley High School, and organized the school's Valley Mountaineer Club and Stock Car Racing Club. The Mountaineer Club helped to instill a connection with nature and the outdoors through wilderness activities such as hiking, camping and rafting. Each year, the Stock Car Racing Club built and raced a car, giving young people hands-on mechanical experience and a sense of accomplishment. During his time at Valley High School, Roger also worked with students to help them through a time when racial and ethnic tensions were running high. Through a series of discussions, Roger encouraged the students to examine the reasons for their conflicts. One student summed it up: I hate 'em because my Dad hated 'em." Says Roger: "Prejudice is learned. If you can communicate through that, you can become a community. So I decided to 'unlearn' them."

While Roger values his formal education, he feels that its significance pales in comparison to the knowledge and values he gained through living on a farm. He points out that farming requires budgeting, sustainability, responsibility, and a connection to nature and the physical world - something from which people are increasingly isolated today. These are all skills and values that are crucial to the continued success of Wildlife West, not to mention the world that surrounds it.

"The Park is a manifestation of reality, "says Roger, explaining that it is something that requires real action and interaction. The Park is also a realization of Roger's dreams - a place where education, nature, and hands-on experience with everything from animal husbandry to construction and conservation provide a unique learning and development experience for young people. According to Roger, nearly all of the park's habitats and other structures were constructed by about 500 youths, about 250 of whom were paid through the New Mexico Youth Conservation Corps. As Roger puts it, this is one way of countering Nature Deficit Disorder (for more information, see Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods) and developing skills that kids will value greatly for the rest of their lives.

In addition to his work at the Park, Roger serves on the Town of Edgewood's Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee and is a member of the Board of Directors of the local Chamber of Commerce. For the most part, he prefers to remain out of politics, joking that he has been "running from office" for years. Roger is also a veteran, having served for two years in the Army during the Vietnam War.

Roger has never been paid any salary from the proceeds of the Park, having received a minimal amount of money from a couple of very small grants throughout the Park's history. He says that he has learned to "get by on less" - but given the satisfaction and joy he reaps from touching the lives of young people and creating a world-class nature park, perhaps getting by on less means getting more out of life.