KANE — A dedication ceremony for the McCleery Discovery Center in Kane is set for 6 p.m. Friday.
The Kane Historic Preservation Society has established the McCleery Discovery Center in Kane where McCleery’s dream began and came to fruition.
The Center is located in the restored 1871 Pennsylvania Railroad Depot, exactly where the first wolf pups arrived in May of 1921, initiating the lifelong journey for Dr. Edward H. McCleery. This temporary center will help introduce McCleery’s work, endangered species protection, and environmental stewardship.
Friday’s ceremony will be held in conjunction with the ArtWorks at the Depot October First Friday event.
Last fall, the society had received a large donation of McCleery artifacts from the E.H. McCleery Buffalo Wolf Foundation in Montana. Items include rare papers and articles dating back to the mid 1910s, complete history of McCleery’s actions to save these wolves from the U.S. Government plan of eradicating them from the Great Plains, wolf pelts and skulls, thousands of photographs, magazine articles, wire service news clips, and more. Coupled with the local historic society’s current collection of Lobo Wolf items, Dick Bly, chairman of the historic society said, “The collection needs to be visible to the public. We have already had thousands of people stopping at the McCleery Discovery Center.”
McCleery was one extraordinary man responsible for saving an entire subspecies of wolves from extinction. Denny Driscoll, secretary of the historic society said, “Without Dr. McCleery’s efforts the Buffalo Wolf, Canis lupus nubilus, would be extinct. This Friday the dedication will honor his dream and destiny and continue his legacy.”
After considerable research, the historic society has concluded that McCleery is truly the first individual in the U.S. (perhaps world) to save an entire subspecies of animals and thus have deemed McCleery as the Father of the American Endangered Species Movement. There is no other known individual that single-handedly saved an entire subspecies.
