MADISON – Conservationist. Leader. Attorney. Optimist. Gentleman. And Wisconsinite through and through.
Those descriptions were among a litany offered in remembrance of George Meyer, a Wisconsin farm kid who earned a law degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and later became secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation.
Meyer died Wednesday, Dec. 10, at age 78 in hospice at his home in Madison. He was diagnosed more than a year ago with PSA-negative metastatic prostate cancer.
“George was highly intelligent, articulate and passionate in his work,” said former Gov. Tommy Thompson, who appointed Meyer as DNR secretary after a change in state law made the role a cabinet position. “He loved his family, loved this state and its natural resources and truly made a huge, positive difference in his service to Wisconsin.”
Meyer was born on a dairy farm in New Holstein and assimilated his family’s values of hard work, land stewardship and a deep, German-Catholic faith.
And though asthma kept him from following the family path into farming, Meyer found a different calling, said Jayne Meyer, George’s wife of 52 years.
“He discovered advocacy, for others, for the environment, for the natural resources,” she said. “And he developed an unwavering belief in improving the world for future generations.”
George Meyer earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from St. Norbert College in De Pere and a law degree from UW–Madison.
Meyer began his career during ‘transformative era’ in conservation
Meyer’s formal career in conservation began in 1970 during his first year of law school when, acting on a tip from classmate Tom Fox, he applied for and was hired as a part-time law clerk at the DNR.
It was a time of upheaval in American environmental law and policy. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio had burned in 1969 and the negative impacts of DDT and other pesticides were becoming clear.
And 12 days after Meyer started his part-time job at the DNR, the first Earth Day was held April 22, 1970. Meyer was 22 years old.
“It was a transformative era,” Meyer told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2020 for a 50-year anniversary story on Earth Day. “It was the golden age of environmental protection in this country.”
Because Meyer had so recently started his job, he did not take part in a formal Earth Day event. However, he will forever be linked to the changes it helped create.
After he finished his law degree in 1972, Meyer was hired full-time by the DNR, one of three staff positions funded through a new piece of federal legislation called the Clean Water Act.
It launched a 30-year, full-time career with the agency, including as staff attorney (1972-80), administrator of the Enforcement Division (1980-93) and secretary (1993-2001).
As staff attorney, Meyer worked to help protect the state’s natural resources through use of the Northwest Ordinance and what at the time was an obscure, 1878 Wisconsin Chapter 30 statute, the Public Trust Doctrine. He represented the state in more than 500 contested administrative hearings as the DNR sought to reduce pollution and destruction of waterways.
Later, as administrator of the Division of Enforcement, Meyer helped develop Wisconsin’s current wetland protection regulations, regarded as some of the strongest and most comprehensive in the nation.
The enforcement administrator role also helped reveal Meyer’s courage and establish his reputation as a fighter for the environment and the rule of law.
In the mid-1980s, the Posse Comitatus, an armed citizens group in the Shawano area, built a compound for its militia without the required DNR land-use permits. After confrontations arose between county officials and the growing militia, Meyer, often surrounded by state and county security details due to threats of violence, used legal means to thwart the group for its lack of permits. A collaborative effort of local, DNR and federal law enforcement led to arrests and dissolution of the armed group.
Meyer was a leader in helping protect treaty hunting, fishing and gathering rights
Meyer also was head of DNR’s enforcement division as the state began implementation of controversial Ojibwe off-reservation treaty rights, including spearfishing for walleyes, in the early 1980s. Northern Wisconsin was a tinder box, with angry crowds at many boat landings attempting to block Ojibwe tribal members from exercising their newly affirmed rights.
Meyer was vilified by many area residents. Retired DNR warden supervisor Dave Zeug has a photo he took at a boat landing in 1984 showing protesters with a sign that read “George Meyer and Don Hanaway, the Give Away Twins.” Hanaway was Wisconsin attorney general at the time.
Randy Stark, a native of Superior, was 22 years old in 1984, fresh out of the warden academy and part of a large DNR force assigned to the spear fishing issue.
He recalls a DNR warden meeting that spring at a home in Trout Lake. Many of the more experienced wardens had spent years protecting walleyes as the fish spawned before the start of sport fishing season, Stark said, and now they were struggling with a court ruling that would allow tribal spearers to take some of the fish.
Meyer came to the meeting and addressed his warden staff; everybody in the room hung on Meyer’s words, Stark said.
Though 41 years have passed, Stark said the memory is crystal clear because the message “just landed on me.”
“George said, ‘I know this is going to be an uncomfortable piece of our history,'” Stark recalled. “‘But I want to remind you what that badge on your chest is about. When you took an oath, you took an oath to uphold the rule of law. And that’s what we’re gonna do. You might not like it, but that’s what a democracy does.'”
Stark said the tone of the room was transformed.
“In that one moment George showed up and did the right thing at the right time and for the right reason,” said Stark, who would rise to chief warden. “I think it saved a lot of people’s lives.”
Working with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, Meyer helped negotiate more than 40 agreements establishing safe, lawful and equitable implementation of treaty-protected hunting, fishing and gathering rights. His leadership helped reduce tensions, avert violence and forge lasting frameworks for shared resource management, Stark said.
Meyer was later selected as secretary, the DNR’s highest position, a job he held from 1993 until 2001.
During Meyer’s leadership of the agency, the state acquired 142,000 acres of land for recreational purposes, including Milwaukee’s Lakeshore and Henry Aaron Trail state parks, the Willow Flowage Scenic Waters, and the 50-square-mile Great Addition. It also cleaned up 12,000 of Wisconsin’s contaminated sites in the Brownfield Cleanup Program, acquired approval for the nation’s first mercury emission regulations, re-established a wild elk population and, in 2001, convinced lawmakers to reauthorize the Knowles Nelson Stewardship Program.
Over the years Meyer earned a reputation for creating a team attitude at the DNR and deflecting praise onto others.
Meyer set the tone daily in the office and even in writing in the Enforcement Division’s strategic plan, said Tom Thoresen of Fitchburg, who worked as a deputy chief conservation warden during Meyer’s tenure.
“George wrote how important every person was, the importance of being on the same team, and the importance of planning for the future, and of bringing other people in, including outreach to the public and involving the public in our plans,” Thoresen said. “And when you’ve got good plans and good leadership – and that’s what George provided – everything falls together.”
Meyer, an avid sports fan, used University of Wisconsin athletics to help bond the DNR team, too, on occasion assembling employees in a conference room in the evening to watch televised games. Meyer was a regular attendee in recent years at UW volleyball matches.
Meyer had continued impact in role with Wisconsin Wildlife Federation
After retiring from the DNR in 2002, Meyer served as visiting professor at Lawrence University in Appleton and became the first executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, an affiliation of more than 200 conservation clubs. In 2013 Meyer created the Wisconsin Conservation Leadership Corps, a WWF youth program designed to train young leaders in conservation policy and advocacy through mentorship with experts.
Meyer’s regular appearances at club meetings around the state burnished his reputation with the public. Though a nationally recognized natural resources leader, he was humble, amiable and made everyone feel comfortable and important, said Jocelyn Meyer, George and Jayne’s daughter.
“One of the greatest lessons I learned from Dad was how to cultivate deep and meaningful relationships,” Jocelyn Meyer said. “Our greatness comes from what we give to the world. Family, friends, coworkers and any creature out there, deserving of love and respect. He loved deeply and valued his connections with others above all else.”
Meyer worked over the last years of his life to help the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation achieve a settlement with an energy development company in the project to install the state’s largest solar power project adjacent to Buena Vista State Wildlife Area near Plover. The settlement hopes to establish a national model for balancing renewable energy development with wildlife protection.
Christine Thomas, retired dean of the College of Natural Resources at UW-Stevens Point and former chairperson of the Natural Resources Board, said she had the pleasure of knowing and working with Meyer for nearly 40 years in many roles in both Wisconsin and the national conservation community.
“George was always there when the resources of the state and nation needed him,” Thomas said. “It is hard to imagine more dedication. His was a conservation life well lived.”
In 2018 Meyer was inducted into the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame. In June 2025, he received the National Wildlife Federation’s lifetime achievement award, with NWF President Collin O’Mara calling him “a force for nature in the Great Lakes and beyond.”
In 2020, as the world dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic, Meyer displayed his characteristic optimism.
“Peoples lives are being changed and we’re seeing the need for science in a very immediate way,” Meyer said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “If we as a nation continue to value science to address these larger, longer-term problems like climate change, I think we could see another time of significant progress.”
Meyer is survived by his wife, Jayne; daughter Jocelyn and her husband Tony; son Andrew; grandson Laken; sister Pat Buechel (Paul); sisters-in-law Ellen Coke (Ron) and Laura Root; brother-in-law Thomas Hase (Ellen); and many beloved cousins, nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents, Elwin and Rose, and sisters Betty Duzinske (Lyle) and Rosemarie Thome (Gordon).
A celebration of Meyer’s life will be held in spring 2026. The family suggested donations in Meyer’s honor be made to the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation and welcomed condolences through his CaringBridge site.
Paul A. Smith can be reached at psmith@jrn.com and on X @mjsps.
This story was updated to correct an inaccuracy and to add a photo gallery.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ex-Wisconsin DNR secretary George Meyer remembered as leading conservationist
Reporting by Paul A. Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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