The Recipe for Success

What is the recipe for success for the future of conservation in Missouri? All the ingredients exist, right now, and have been in place a long time in Missouri. Every day, the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) is helping Missourians do great things for conservation in Missouri.

Aldo Leopold, a widely respected thinker and writer about conservation science, wrote in the 1940s that "Conservation, at bottom, rests on the conviction that there are things in this world more important than dollar signs and ciphers. Many of these other things attach to the land, and to the life that is on it and in it. People who know these other things have been growing scarcer, but less so in Missouri than elsewhere. That is why conservation is possible here. If conservation can become a living reality, it can do so in Missouri. This is because Missourians, in my opinion, are not completely industrialized in mind and spirit, and I hope never will be."

The seeds of action for the immediate future in Missouri are described in The Next Generation of Conservation available from the Missouri Department of Conservation at: http://mdc.mo.gov/about/next_gen/

What else is needed? For Missourians to be active participants at some level, whether simply being aware of how the natural world is the foundation of our quality of life, or participating in outdoor recreation of any kind, or by taking a more active role in conservation work.

Theodore Roosevelt wrote in 1910 that "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

I can imagine that Roosevelt might have wanted to have the rousing sounds of the "Mission Impossible" music playing in the background as he encouraged us to spend ourselves in the worthy cause for conservation.