Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris has won a conservation award named after him. The Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies presented its inaugural Johnny Morris Award to him for a lifetime of service to fish and wildlife conservation. The new award will be conferred annually to a citizen conservationist who “exemplifies Morris’s leadership at the highest level and commitment to solving large-scale natural resource challenges”.
Morris started in the early 1970s with a U-Haul trailer full of bass tackle and 8ft of sales space in his father’s liquor store in Springfield, Missouri.
Now more than 100 million shoppers visit one of the company’s 58 stores across the US and Canada annually. Morris has received numerous honours, including the Teddy Roosevelt Conservationist Award and the International Conservation Achievement Award. He was inducted into the International Game Fish Association’s Hall of Fame in 2005, and served three terms as chairman of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.