Conservation News
Design for Conservation has cost small change but yielded big changes in wildlife management
By Jim Low
JEFFERSON CITY---Questions: Why do Missourians have more than 700 state-owned public areas for hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, camping, birdwatching and nature study while most other eastern states have only a fraction as many? Why do private landowners in Missouri have access to a wide array of locally-administered wildlife assistance programs? Why are deer, turkey, Canada goose and other wildlife populations robust in the Show-Me State? The answer to these questions lies in events set in motion in the general election of 1976.
That year, Missouri voters approved a one-eighth of 1 percent sales tax earmarked for the state's conservation program. When citizen conservation groups proposed the sales tax, the Missouri Department of Conservation devised a blueprint for using the money. Work on this Design for Conservation began in 1977, when the Conservation Department started receiving revenues from the sales tax.
Since that time, the Conservation Department's Wildlife Division has undergone extensive changes. Reorganization has pared away some functions that were part of the division in 1976. These include wildlife damage control, donations, federal aid liaison and administering managed hunts. Helping private landowners - an important function because 93 percent of the state's acreage is in private hands - now also is performed by a separate, new division created specifically for that purpose.
The number of workers directly involved in wildlife management has increased during the past 25 years, but the number of Wildlife Division employees in Jefferson City has been cut significantly. In 1976, the central office staff consisted of 12 wildlife professionals and five clerical workers. Today it comprises just six professionals and three clericals. The remaining 200 Wildlife Division employees work out of local offices at dozens of locations around the state.
"Our office staff is the smallest in the central office," says Wildlife Division Administrator Ollie Torgerson. "That's the way it should be. We have put more of our work force and decision making in field offices closer to where the resources are."
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