Ask a Department of Conservation Expert for the Answer to a Conservation Question

This past week I found a small bird nest along my driveway. It was very small, about 1.5 inches in diameter, and my wife and I first thought it might be a hummingbird nest. It had soft plant material inside and lichens all around the outside.

I asked staff in the Wildlife Division in the Department of Conservation about the nest. They guided me to look up the blue-gray gnatcatcher. That's it! The Department also has an information page about the blue-gray gnatcatcher.

The Department of Conservation has experts that can help answer a wide variety of fish, forest, and wildlife questions. You can ask a question online, or contact your local office. There are eight Department regional offices in Missouri. You can also look up specific staff and subject areas on the Department's media contacts roster.

A wide variety of information that can help answer questions is available on the Department's Web pages and in the online articles from the Missouri Conservationist magazine.

You Can Make a Difference for Conservation in Missouri by Planting a Tree or Many Trees

In 1992, when my boys were still in elementary school, we planted some trees that we ordered from the Department of Conservation's forest nursery. We planted a variety of trees, but one of my favorites is the bald cypress. One bald cypress that we planted is nearly 40 feet tall today. It started out less than one foot tall and the boys poked it in the ground in the front yard.

It grew quickly. If you would plant one next spring, it could be over 20 feet tall in less than 10 years.

I like the bald cypress. It is found mostly in the bootheel region of southeast Missouri, but it can adapt and grow well even on dryer upland areas, like yards and hillsides, all over the state. Bald cypress trees can live a long time. The tree we planted could still be living in 600 years.

That's a long time to make a statement and make a difference by simply planting a tree.

Missourians think planting trees is important. In a statewide survey in 2003, most Missourians, 82 percent, agreed that the Department of Conservation should help private landowners who want to restore native communities of plants and animals.

You can learn more about the Department of Conservation tree nursery program that offers Missouri residents a variety of seedlings for reforestation, windbreaks, erosion control, and wildlife food and cover. Much more information about forests in Missouri is available on the forestry library pages of the Department of Conservation.

Or you can learn more about using native plants for landscaping or other wildlife benefits on the Grow Native! Web pages.

Deer Harvest Map and Totals for Missouri on Department of Conservation Web Pages

A post in the Fresh Afield blog yesterday on the Missouri Department of Conservation Web pages showed a link to a map that has the overall total deer harvest in Missouri and the harvest for each county.

The state and county totals are updated from the Department's Deer and Turkey Telecheck system, which is an online and telephone checking system to report harvest.

In checking the map page again while writing this, I've watched the deer harvest numbers go up, both for the statewide total and for Callaway County where I live.

I'll use a phrase another Department of Conservation biologist frequently uses when describing really interesting things, "How cool is that?"

You can learn more about deer hunting in Missouri and the other kinds of fall hunting opportunities on the Department of Conservation Web pages.

Attend the Excellence in Missouri Conference to Learn How to Improve Quality and Performance

The Excellence in Missouri Foundation will hold it's annual conference on November 14-16, 2007. The conference is a great place to learn about the criteria of performance excellence used for the Missouri Quality Award and how other businesses and organizations are improving quality, customer satisfaction, and their operational performance.

The conference will include speakers from the 2006 award recipients of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

What does this have to do with the next generation of conservation in Missouri? One of the strategic goals of the Department of Conservation is to continue to operate effectively with accountability for public funds and respect for Missouri citizens. The criteria of the Missouri Quality Award provide a framework to do exactly that and staff in the Department are learning more about the criteria and how it can be used in conservation efforts.

Even if you can't attend the conference, you can learn more by reading about the criteria and the specific items of the seven categories.

Hunters Have Supported Conservation and Wildlife Management in Missouri and the United States Since 1937

The November National Geographic magazine came in the mail to my home today.

There is an article on page 112 about "Hunters for love of the land."

Hunters in the United States, and also in Missouri, have been strong supporters of conservation and fish, forest, and wildlife management since 1937.

In the article on page 126 is a chart that indicates that 75 percent of the revenue for state wildlife agencies comes from license sales and federal excise taxes. The excise taxes are from the Federal Aid in Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration programs. The federal wildlife program began in 1937 to help states manage wildlife and to implement conservation management activities.

Many people talk about conservation or what should be done. Hunters have put their money on the table for over 70 years for fish, wildlife, and habitat management. In many states, hunters and anglers have been and continue to be the folks that pay for conservation.

Only Missouri and Arkansas have state sales taxes dedicated to conservation. Several other states have a variety of other methods to help fund conservation, including income tax check-off opportunities and other methods. In Missouri, no other general revenue from the state is used for the Department of Conservation.

Missouri was the first state, in 1976, to have a majority of the residents recognize the need to have long-term and stable funding for conservation activities. Healthy fish, forests, and wildlife benefit all Missourians with increased quality of life and economic benefits.

You can read the article online, or if you're like my family, we often look at the pictures first and the online article has a picture gallery.

A Career as a Wildlife Biologist or Photographer for the Missouri Department of Conservation

Here is a YouTube video on being a Wildlife Biologist:






and another on being a photographer for the Missouri Department of Conservation:

A Career as a Conservation Agent for the Missouri Department of Conservation

Department of Conservation staff have been adding videos to YouTube. Here is one on being a Conservation Agent:

Insight from Aldo Leopold's "Why and How Research" for Conservation and the Core Concepts of Performance Excellence

Why and how research. In 1948, Aldo Leopold, Professor of Wildlife Management at the University of Wisconsin, wrote a paper titled "Why and How Research" that was read by Robert McCabe at the North American Wildlife Conference. I have returned to the words of this paper again and again since I first saw it in the mid 1980s. The paper is available in the Transactions of the North American Wildlife Conference, Volume 13, pages 44-48.

I read it again this week and realized that his thoughts address many of the core concepts of performance excellence in the quality improvement criteria of the Missouri Quality Award from a wildlife perspective. Leopold's writing from nearly 60 years ago has important insights for how we conduct our learning and research efforts today to improve the fish, forests, and wildlife in Missouri through our conservation efforts.

A systems perspective. I believe Leopold intuitively understood the core concepts of performance excellence as they have been written recently, and they include:

• visionary leadership
• customer-driven excellence
• organizational and personal learning
• valuing employees and partners
• agility
• focus on the future
• managing for innovation
• management by fact
• social responsibility
• focus on results and creating value
• systems perspective

Leopold's words. Leopold wrote "Much of the confusion about wildlife research arises, I think, from a false premise as to its purpose." He continues "the primary purpose of wildlife research is, in my view, to develop and expand this understanding of the biotic drama. It must, of course, contrive also to keep wildlife on the map, in good quantity, and in as much diversity as possible."

Leopold builds his case for both long- and short-term research by stating "Once in a blue moon research will, by accident, hit upon a discovery of practical value without any preliminary work on fundamentals, but when pursued as a policy, such accidental hits are a losing game."

Leopold was concerned in 1948 that funding for a broad-based, long-term research program based on fundamentals, what he called "deep-digging," was not being supported across the 50 states, and that too much emphasis was being placed on short-term "practical" efforts that produced quick answers.

He wrote "This is why research on most American game species is in a blind alley today. The proof that we are in a blind alley is that we are unable to explain, much less to predict, current events." He continues "in fact it could be said that deer and waterfowl are about the only major game groups in which current ups and downs can be explained, with confidence, in terms of visible causes."

A balanced program to reduce fumbling. Leopold admonishes us with his closing words "What I am asking for is a balanced program, which recognizes that some research jobs are short while others are long, and that neglect of either is poor policy." He proposes "To reduce fumbling is our most important job. If we fail to reduce this fumbling today, the well-springs of funds will dry up tomorrow."

Visionary leadership. In writing "Why and How Research," Leopold certainly places an emphasis on resource managers that can think; managers that can design research and take the time to understand all the components of nature and the different expectations of people to benefit from and experience nature. Leopold's admonition to produce information from "deep-digging" is his call to take a broad, "systems perspective" and to make conservation management decisions that are innovative, based on facts, that focus on results and the future, and that meet the expectations and exemplary performance demanded by a broad-based constituency of hunters, anglers, wildlife watchers, and everyone that understands that the natural world is the foundation of our economic success and quality of life.

Increasing organizational learning with valued employees and partners. I believe Leopold would be pleased at where the staff of the Missouri Department of Conservation have been and where they are going with research on wildlife, and with research on fish and forests.

Leopold, had he had the benefit of the current words, would have said it's our "social responsibility" to take a balanced approach to gathering information, as he clearly indicates in "Why and How Research" when he states that in the 1948 time period, the state of Wisconsin might have to proceed with its long-term quail research project without outside funding because "the value of what we find may extend far beyond quail."

Leopold was concerned about performance, including his own, the performance of the relatively new, at that time, profession of wildlife management, and the ultimate performance of improving fish, forests, and wildlife and increasing the level of understanding of the complex biological relationships of animals and their habitats.

When I sit in a meeting, as I did last week, to hear discussion about the methods of a research project and if it should be funded, I think about "Why and How Research." I think Leopold would be pleased with our attempts to reduce "fumbling." He said it best: "To reduce fumbling is our most important job." And to reduce fumbling, and to increase performance, is what the quality performance criteria is also all about.