Salyer and the U.S. Wildlife Reserve System

After graduation from Central, Salyer taught in Kansas, both at the K-12 as well as in higher education levels, before accepting a research fellowship at the Institute for Fisheries at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He then went on to work for the Iowa Fish and Game Commission before being recruited to Bureau of Biological Survey specifically to build wildlife refuges in 1935.

Salyer is directly responsible for the wildlife refuge system as it is today. Working with his own extensive knowledge of American ecology and Alpo Leopold's principles of conservation management which he had learned at Central, he grew the wildlife refuge system of the United States from 1.5 million acres upon his appointment, to 29 million acres upon his retirement in 1961. For this he called the "Father of the U.S. Wildlife Refuge System".