Alumni | Bell TowerOctober 18, 2024

A Feather in his Cap: The Life and Career of Dr. Charles Preston

Written By: Ian Silvester

 

By Ian Silvester

University of Arkansas – Fort Smith alum Dr. Charles “Chuck” Preston, 40 years into his biology career with no signs of slowing, has educated millions of people and upended the way visitors experience natural history museums. 

Born at Fort Chaffee in 1952, Preston grew up in the area and had two passions in life: wildlife and baseball. The 1970 Northside High School grad leveraged his prowess on the baseball diamond to attend Westark Junior College.

Preston attended Westark in the early 1970s. He was part of the 1972 Lions baseball team that, under the direction of coach Bill Crowder, racked up a 31-18 season and scored an NJCAA Region II Sub-Regional Championship.

Preston always found solace in nature. A hunting trip with his dad at Fort Chaffee changed his life and laid the foundation for his education and career. 

“I was about 7 or 8 years old, and my dad and I were driving through the Chaffee reservation when my dad pulled off the road,” Preston recalled. “He said, ‘Look up there,’ and I have these little hand-me-down binoculars, and I was looking up. Sure enough, I finally saw it. It was silhouetted first, and just a little beam of light came through, and I could see this huge, great-horned owl, and his big yellow eyes were looking at me. … We watched it fly off into the darkness, and it made a real impression on me.” 

Preston carried this encounter with him to Arkansas Tech University, where he continued playing baseball and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and wildlife management. 

Preston landed his first museum job at the Arkansas Museum of Science and History in Little Rock. There wasn’t a job available, but his charismatic personality won over the museum director. Preston started his career in museums by cleaning animal cages. While it wasn’t glorious, it did afford him the opportunity to learn how to curate scientific collections and exhibits and gave him the “fuel to go to grad school.” 

He completed his master’s degree and Ph.D. in zoology with an emphasis in ecology, both from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. After earning his Ph.D., Preston followed wife Penny, an award-winning broadcast reporter, to Little Rock. There, he started as a visiting assistant professor of biology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and later became a tenured professor. At UALR, Preston helped create the wildlife curriculum and curated the university’s small museum.

“It’s one of the first times I was in the position to be on the ground floor of something,” he said. “I fit very nicely.”

Heading West 

Preston’s UALR tenure concluded in 1989 when he was recruited by the Denver Museum of Natural History, now the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Leaving his tenured professorship was difficult, but the opportunity to work at a renowned institution in the Rockies was exciting, Preston said. 

By December 1989, Preston moved to the Mile High City as curator of ornithology and chairman of the Department of Zoology. 

Preston continued working at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science until the summer of 1998. He joked that he could have stayed longer if he hadn’t answered the call of a lifetime. 

“When I got the call, I was leading a field trip in southern Colorado, and this guy said, ‘We’re creating a brand-new natural history museum, and we’d like for you to come interview.’ I asked, ‘Who is this?’ and he said the Buffalo Bill Historical Center like I should have known it, and I did not,” Preston said with a laugh. 

Near Yellowstone National Park, the center comprised a world-class art museum, a Plains Indian museum, a firearms museum, and a history museum about Buffalo Bill. However, the center was rebranding to become the Buffalo Bill Center of the West and was searching for someone to create and direct a new addition: a natural history museum.

Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson was serving as the center’s board chairman and wouldn’t take no for an answer from Preston.

“Simpson and the center’s executive director, Byron Price, called me directly after that and said, ‘We would really like you to come up,’ and he explained a little bit more about what was going on,” Preston said. “They told me I’d create from the ground floor and lead the design and development. How many people have the opportunity to do that?” 

Preston arrived in Cody, Wyoming, with a blank slate and $20 million backing from Nancy-Carroll Draper, a Center trustee who championed the addition of a natural history museum. For four years, from 1998 until 2002, Preston worked with architects from Denver and exhibit designers from New York City, to design, create, and fill 50,000 square feet of museum space. According to the center's website, the result is an “innovative, informative, and inspiring exhibit experience.” 

The Draper Natural History Museum opened on June 4, 2002, drawing a crowd that included prominent figures like paleoanthropologist Richard Leaky, a Kenyan conservationist, and actor and director Clint Eastwood. As visitors travel through the museum, they are treated to sights, sounds, and smells that match the area of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem they are touring, from mountains to the plains basin. 

“(It’s) considered a model for a whole new genre of natural history museums,” Preston said proudly. 

Hired by Preston in 2017 as the assistant curator of the Draper, Corey Anco detailed how Preston “took a risk on a not-yet-built natural history museum.” 

“It takes a rare combination of ambition, risk calculation, perseverance, work ethic, and gumption to achieve what he did with the Draper,” Anco wrote in an email. “It was (Preston’s) drive to share his knowledge with others in engaging and immersive ways that make the Draper a special, first-of-its-kind natural history museum.” 

Anco’s sentiment was seconded by Dr. D. Tim White, a retired Air Force General and former member of the Center’s advisory board who now works as a professor at the University of Maryland.

“The Draper is as experiential as the Guggenheim is immersive. … That was (Preston’s) idea. He pulled it off, not just better than anybody else, but before anybody else.”

Preston retired from the Draper in 2018 and was named senior curator emeritus and research associate at the Teton Raptor Center. 

Chuck and Penny Preston spend summers in the Greater Yellowstone area, where he continues his research, and she reports as a Yellowstone correspondent. They spend winters in Mountainburg.

Unflappable Passion for Orinthology

Being hired to create and curate the Draper Natural History Museum, a part of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, not only gave UAFS alum Dr. Charles Preston international fame in the world of museums, but it also provided him access to the pristine Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. There, he rediscovered his love of birds, especially raptors.

Preston is one of the world’s best-known researchers of golden eagles. So, what led him to these birds? Preston said he came along at the right time with the right ideas. 

“Golden eagles became a big concern in the West because of wind turbines and lead poisoning from ammunition. It was coming to the forefront in the fact that some of those populations in the West were declining,” he explained. 

After Preston retired from the Draper in 2018, he was named senior curator emeritus and research associate at the Teton Raptor Center. Today, he is in his 16th year of researching golden eagels and has banded over 100 of them throughout his time in the field. 

Dr. Anant Deshwal is an assistant professor of biology at Bradley University at Peoria, Illinois. Shortly after studying under Preston at the University of Arkansas, Deshwal joined him to study golden eagles. He explained that his dream as a student was to work with Preston in the field. 

“For Preston, conservation and creating awareness is not a job description; it’s his way of life,” Deshwal said. “I think he’s the only person I know who has the unique ability to conduct research to the highest standards while being able to connect with non-research folks at whatever level they are most comfortable with. … After a feature display, I saw people come up and ask what they needed to do to help. They’re not conservation biologists, but that’s the impact he has.” 

Preston’s research studies the eagles through their the harmonious balance with their prey, cottontail rabbits. The equilibrium between the two species populations was apparent, but what he found beyond the surface has proved critical for both animals' survival. 

“We monitored nesting success and reproductive rate, assuming that we would get a baseline after a couple of years. But we discovered that it fluctuated a lot from year to year. We found that as the cottontail cycle goes up and down, so does the golden eagle’s reproduction. … That cycle worked beautifully, and then all of a sudden, when we expected the eagles to come up after a low, neither rabbits nor eagles came up,” Preston explained. 

A virus native to Europe had found its way to the Bighorn Basin, hurting both the cottontails and golden eagles. Preston’s research showed that in 2020, the population cycle should have rebounded, but it didn’t. 

“Rabbit hemorrhagic disease emerged,” Preston stated. “It really hit our population hard, especially in the Bighorn Basin. … That’s one of the reasons I’m still doing all this – because there are more questions to answer.” 

Although Preston has eased up in his daily activities, he doesn’t think he will be packing it in anytime soon, even at 71. 

“I feel like I could live forever,” Preston joked. 

He and wife Penny have been together for nearly 50 years and currently split their time between Mountainburg, Arkansas, and the Greater Yellowstone area. 

“I give myself one day at a time. I have visions of what I want to do in the future, but I enjoy every day. I don’t take it for granted,” Preston said.

Read Dr. Charles Preston's full story here.

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