News Photo by Julie Riddle Hillman-area resident Carol Moncrieff Rose, newly appointed as chair of the Michigan Natural Resources Commission, takes a break from conservation work to throw a flying discus for her dog, Juni.

HILLMAN — Northeast Michigan has a new voice among the decision-makers who dictate the who, what, and when of some of the region’s most cherished outdoor activities.

Carol Moncrieff Rose, a Hillman-area resident and new appointee to the Michigan Natural Resources Commission, calls the Alpena region “the last frontier” in Michigan. She told The News Wednesday she’ll use her experience and deep-rooted love of nature to speak up at the state level for those who hunt and fish the woods and streams of northern Michigan and beyond.

The recent NRC appointee — the first Northeast Michigander to sit on the seven-member governing group since 1986 — sipped a cup of coffee in her rural home on Wednesday, a stack of nature magazines in front of her.

“My involvement in conservation is defined by the stack of magazines on my table,” Rose said, flipping through titles like Michigan Out-of-Doors, Atlantic Salmon, and Turkey Country.

She’s going on her first turkey hunt this fall, Rose said, a spark of anticipation in her eyes.

It won’t be her first foray into nature, though.

The Montmorency County woman just chosen as chair of the state committee whose decisions affect hunters and anglers statewide has been marvelling at nature since her childhood days.

Raised in what was then Ann Arbor Township, Rose lived across the road from a centennial farm where she and the other children of the neighborhood were welcome to roam rows of mown hay, follow deer tracks, and study the minutiae of wildflowers and vines.

“Your imagination latches on and takes you where you want to go,” Rose said, describing her childhood wonder at ducks and pheasants hanging from neighbors’ clotheslines and deer hanging in garages.

The explosion of discovery that was her girlhood led — after years of city living and a banking career — to a decision by Rose and her husband in 1983 to leave Ann Arbor and move to the forests of Up North, surrounding themselves with the nature that felt like home, even while their friends questioned their choice to leave city life.

“We got out in one piece,” Rose said. “And in this case, it was P-E-A-C-E.”

A lodge on the shore of serene Ess Lake provided a sanctuary where Rose could pass on her enchantment with nature to visiting children and their families, planning nature scavenger hunts and identifying wildflowers and holding clam races for those who had never been truly exposed to the outdoors.

If you reach them young, she said, children can grow up to hunt and fish and care for their environment — passions that are foundational to Northeast Michigan, the new NRC commissioner said.

Outdoor life — especially hunting and fishing — is a major money-maker for small communities and the state as a whole, Rose said. Michigan activities related to hunting garner $11.2 billion every year, money that flows into communities — hunters have to eat, sleep, and buy gas, after all — and into care for the very lands used by sportsmen through hunting and fishing license fees.

It’s time for Northeast Michigan to be represented on the commission again, Rose said.

In the past, Harry Whiteley — then from Rogers City — was a voice for the region, serving on the commission for 25 years.

Rose was appointed after she was brought to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s notice because of her steady work with local, state, and national conservation organizations, including a chairmanship of the Michigan Wildlife Council and work with the Michigan United Conservation Clubs.

Her work as chair of the collaborative Upper Black River Council and involvement with a host of other organizations — from shooting clubs to a lifetime membership with Trout Unlimited — have introduced her to outdoors-lovers from all over the state, exposing her to regional cultures and the need to respect differences while making decisions in the best interest of everyone, something she plans to do while heading up the NRC.

Chosen by Whitmer in June and ratified recently by the Senate, Rose has gotten calls and emails already from hunters and anglers, asking her to be their voice on issues from antler point restrictions to COVID-19-related changes to duck hunting lotteries.

She answers every email and listens to callers, often inviting them to speak during the public comment session of an NRC meeting — easier than ever now, since the all-virtual meetings don’t require a drive from the Upper Peninsula all the way to Lansing just to make a three-minute comment.

While busily adjusting to a new set of meetings and phone calls and giving herself a crash course in the topics most pressing to anglers and hunters, Rose still makes time for daily wanders through the woods, check-ins on the local woodpecker families, and throwing a flying discus for her genial English cocker spaniel, Juni.

Last year, she was ecstatic to get her first-ever elk tag for the December hunt, and took a large cow on her second day out.

The busy conservationist still wears on her face the wonder and delight of the little girl who was entranced by spiraling seed pods and halooed into culverts and marvelled at bitterns as they mixed in with the tall grasses in the great and lovely outdoors of her youth.

“It’s all out there,” Rose said. “There’s beauty everywhere. You just have to look for it.”