Wildlife Volunteer

Frank Bragg

Frank Bragg is founder of the Charlotte-based Bragg Financial Advisors, so this is a man who knows all about numbers. Bragg can tell you that the greatest gains are realized when resources are pooled together. Compounding interest pays the biggest dividends when there is a larger account to work with.

But in this case, the interest Bragg is talking about isn’t percentages of dollar returns, but sightings of timber rattlesnakes and bobwhite quail on the land he has helped set aside from development in Mecklenburg County. And we’re not talking about managing a trust fund, but about Frank Bragg taking seriously the trust he holds in the land he owns in what is left of rural Mecklenburg County.

Frank Bragg has turned his Mecklenburg County property into a mecca for wildlife and wildlife researchers. His farm is used for research and education by students and professors from Davidson College, Queens University, and UNC-Charlotte. And thanks to Bragg’s vision, his property isn’t alone. Bragg has worked with 11 other Huntersville landowners to set aside almost 5,000 contiguous private acres for conservation.

Frank Bragg makes a living working the numbers. But he will tell you that he is most alive working the land for wildlife—on a tractor, with a shovel in hand, with a seed bag on his shoulder. For his commitment to the compounding interest of bluebirds and cottontail rabbits, and for his efforts to convince so many others that they will get the most from their land by letting it stay wild, Frank Bragg is the 2007 Governor’s Wildlife Volunteer of the Year.