Charles W. Schwartz, one of the country’s most influential wildlife artists, and his wife, Elizabeth, contributed significantly to the conservation and environmental movements of the twentieth century. Together the Schwartzes produced twenty-four nature films and wrote or illustrated a dozen important wildlife books. With the help of Elizabeth, Charles also designed more than a dozen popular stamps of fish and waterfowl.

Charles Walsh Schwartz was born in St. Louis on June 2, 1914, to Frederick O. Schwartz and Clara Walsh. His father was a doctor and amateur naturalist. “Carl,” as young Charles was then called, became interested in studying wildlife at a very young age. He spent much of his free time at the St. Louis Zoo in Forest Park, where he met and enjoyed a close friendship with zoologist Marlin Perkins. Perkins helped cultivate Charles’s love of the outdoors and wild animals.

Elizabeth “Libby” Morrow Reeder was born on September 13, 1912, in Columbus, Ohio, to Charles W. Reeder and Lydia Morrow. Her father was a business administration professor at Ohio State University and her mother was an artist. Elizabeth demonstrated an early interest in the environment. “When I was a girl, I loved to go to Girl Scout camp and identify flowers and stars. I used to try for all the badges and pump the leaders for all the information I could get.”

After graduating from McBride High School, Charles attended the University of Missouri on a football scholarship. After an injury ended his athletic career, he focused on biology and zoology classes. Charles also honed his skills as an artist and photographer. He recalled, “In those days, all students had jobs. I collected specimens for my department head, W. C. Curtis, and drew wildlife sketches for fun. Unknown to me, however, Professor Curtis was collecting drawings I threw away. Later, he asked if I would illustrate a new book of his. That was the start of it.”

Elizabeth completed degrees at Ohio State University in Columbus and Columbia University in New York before enrolling in the PhD program at the University of Missouri in 1934. Charles was accepted as a graduate student at MU in 1938. Elizabeth and Charles met in the zoology department when he was assigned to her as a research assistant. They soon discovered they shared many interests in addition to zoology.

Elizabeth finished her doctorate in 1938, and the couple married that year on December 22. Charles completed his master’s degree in 1940. They called each other Charlie and Libby and had three children together: Barbara, Bruce, and John. Working as a team, the Schwartzes soon became important to the conservation and environmental movements of the twentieth century.

In July 1940, Charles was hired as a biologist by the new Missouri Conservation Commission. The commission manages and conserves all of the state’s wildlife resources. Elizabeth soon left teaching to join him. Their first assignment, to study prairie chickens, resulted in the illustrated book The Prairie Chicken in Missouri (published in 1944) and their first feature film (made in 1948).

The Schwartzes also met another young couple working on prairie chickens in Wisconsin, Fred and Fran Hamerstrom, who introduced them to Aldo Leopold. Leopold was an American writer, naturalist, and professor at the University of Wisconsin whose work on ethics influenced the early environmental movement.

Leopold was impressed with the Schwartzes and recommended them for a temporary position with the Board of Agriculture and Forestry in Hawaii. The Schwartzes were hired and became part of a team effort to save the Hawaiian Nene goose from extinction.

The couple knew little about Hawaii and its wildlife when they started, but they set out to learn everything they could. “Charlie would collect the birds and I would stay in camp, dissecting them on the tailgate of our Jeep and watching the kids while they played in the volcanic dust,” Libby recalled. “At night, we would go over the birds together to identify foods, parasites and breeding activity.”

Charles later said of their time in Hawaii, “It got pretty rough…the entire family living out of sleeping bags and jeeps for so long. It was hard going at times…involving much of the flora and fauna…the total ecology of the islands. But we accomplished a lot.”

After studying the geese, the Schwartzes thought that while the Nene had enough food, there were not enough breeding areas for them to survive. They suggested a combination of old and new game management techniques, including breeding captive birds. Their work resulted in the award-winning book A Reconnaissance of the Game Birds in Hawaii (1949). It brought widespread attention to the bird’s dire situation; its population dropped to only thirty birds by 1960. Due to successful restoration and recovery efforts, there are now more than 2,800 Nene geese in Hawaii, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service changed the status of the Nene from endangered to threatened in January 2020.

Upon leaving Hawaii, Charles and Libby returned to work for the Missouri Conservation Commission (where Libby had been hired full-time in 1950) and began to focus on conservation-themed feature films. The films included many critically acclaimed and award-winning productions, such as Bobwhite through the Year (1953), which won the CONI Grand Medal at the International Sports Film Festival as well as a Conservation Education Award from the North American Wildlife Society.

Their return to Missouri also marked the beginning of a busy three-decade stretch for Charles and Libby. They wrote and illustrated articles for the Missouri Conservationist magazine and a series of conservation-themed children’s books. They also illustrated three books for the Leopold family, including the classic A Sand County Almanac (1949) and Wildlife of Mexico (1959). In 1959 they also published one of their best-remembered works, The Wild Mammals of Missouri.

Containing more than 400 illustrations, Wild Mammals included information on more than sixty species of animals that live in Missouri. The American Association for Conservation Information chose it as the outstanding wildlife book of 1959. The book remained so popular that revised editions were published in 1981 and 2001.

During the 1960s, Charles created the first four (of eight) large multicolor panels for a mural in the Missouri Department of Conservation headquarters in Jefferson City. The mural depicts the story of conservation in the state from pre-settlement to modern times. He also created the artwork for Missouri’s first fourteen trout stamps, starting in 1969. These eye-catching stamps not only raised money to fund increased fishing opportunities in Missouri but also captured the attention of stamp collectors.

Charles designed the logo for the Department of Conservation in 1970, and in 1976, he contributed a painting of Canada geese that raised $80,000 at a critical point to help promote the passage of a new conservation tax in Missouri. Missourians approved the proposed amendment that dedicated a portion of the state sales tax to fund the newly expanded conservation program.

In 1979 Charles was selected to create the artwork for Missouri’s waterfowl stamp and print. His book Wildlife Drawings, a collection of wildlife art accompanied by personal notes, was published in 1980.

Beginning in 1965, the Schwartzes embarked on a nearly two-decade study of three-toed box turtles after purchasing a tract of land near Jefferson City. This was a project they undertook in their spare time while continuing their work as biologists at the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Using trained dogs to help them find the turtles, they located approximately six thousand turtles by the end of the project. Charles and Libby also used radio tracking and a trailing device to study the turtles’ population, home range, movements, and habitat. Their research on box turtles resulted in two reports published in 1974 and 1984.

Charles and Libby retired in 1981 and moved to Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho, to be close to their children and grandchildren. In retirement, they stayed active. Charles finished the last four panels of his Missouri Department of Conservation mural in 1987, just in time to celebrate the department’s fiftieth anniversary. The Schwartzes also began work on a new book, About Mammals and How They Live, and spent time duck hunting and enjoying various outdoor activities with their family and friends.

In 1991 Charles died at age seventy-seven of pancreatic cancer. Libby completed About Mammals on her own, and it was released in 1993. Reflecting on her long career, Libby noted, “I never felt any discrimination, but I broke the ice in a lot of places.” She passed away on her birthday in The Dalles, Oregon, on September 13, 2013, at 101 years old.

In 2010 the Conservation Federation of Missouri, the State Historical Society of Missouri, and Bass Pro Shops joined together to create an exhibition of Charles’s artwork and sculpture to pay tribute to one of the Show-Me State’s most influential artists.

Together, Charles and Elizabeth Schwartz worked tirelessly to create art, books, photography, and film that taught the importance of wildlife and the natural environment. They helped shape the modern conservation movement in Missouri and the United States.

Text and research by David R. Torre and Elizabeth E. Engel