Landowners

Gerhard Assenmacher's story is one of hard work and excellence.  As a young man he came to the United States and founded a successful auto repair business in New York State.  From that base, he gradually began to design and manufacture a line of specialty tools leading to the successful firm of Assenmacher Specialty Tools, Inc, based in Boulder, Colorado.  www.asttool.com  After gradually relinquishing his business interests to others, Gerhard did not slow down but rather, in succession, became an award-winning gardener, accomplished wildlife photographer www.photosbygerhard.com and exemplary land and water conservationist. In fact, Gerhard’s bird photographs are captured in Northern Prairies’ Bird Identification Quiz on our Home page.

Gerhard's Medicine Creek Wildlife Refuge is comprised of more than 550 acres of native prairie and rich bottomland in Frontier County, Nebraska.  It surrounds Medicine Creek, a principal tributary of the water-short Republican River, and is one of the few protected properties in the Mixed Grass Prairie Ecoregion, which has been designated as a Natural Legacy Area by the Nebraska Game & Parks Commission. 

This threatened Ecoregion is a transition zone where the tallgrass and shortgrass prairie merge, resulting in highly diverse species.  Key stress points in the region are streambed alteration and degradation, as well as conversion of prairie to cropland.  By protecting the rich riparian ground along Medicine Creek along with the surrounding grassland, the Medicine Creek Wildlife Refuge is a key building block in protecting both plant and animal species.  For example, Gerhard has personally identified more than 100 bird species on the property.

In 2006 Gerhard Assenmacher donated a conservation easement on his property to Northern Prairies Land Trust, assuring continued protection of the rich conservation values found there.