MDC RELEASES REPORT ON ENDANGERED SPECIES

JEFFERSON CITY -- Missouri has been dynamiting homes for rare turtles. It also has been releasing ospreys, prairie chickens, pallid sturgeons, Niangua darters, collared lizards and keeping tabs on endangered Indiana bats, alligator snapping turtles and pondberry. These activities and more are chronicled in the 1994-95 Wildlife Diversity Highlights report from the Missouri Department of Conservation.

The report just skims the surface of MDC work to maintain and enhance the state's rich variety of plant and animal life. Since the agency began receiving proceeds from the one-eighth of one one-percent sales tax in 1977, it has been able to expand its efforts to conserve the full range of plant and animal communities in Missouri, not just those few species of interest to hunters, anglers and trappers.

The MDC is monitoring the progress of:

* Gray and Indiana bats at Boone Cave in Boone County and elsewhere;

* 7,200 endangered pallid sturgeon fingerlings released in the lower Missouri and Mississippi Rivers;

* 10,648 lake sturgeon stocked in the Missouri River;

* Rare pondberry plantings at Corkwood CA in Butler County;

* Osprey reared and released at Mark Twain Lake and Thomas Hill Reservoir;

* Peregrine falcons released in Kansas City;

* Dwindling freshwater mussel populations in the Big Piney River;

* Ozark cavefish and black bears in the Ozarks;

* Alligator snapping turtles in the Bootheel;

* Prairie chickens in western Missouri;

* Prairie plant community at Danville Glades Natural Area in Montgomery County and many other unique plants and animals throughout the state.

Copies of the Wildlife Diversity Highlights report with more information about MDC efforts to preserve the state's biological diversity are available free on request from: Missouri Department of Conservation, Natural History Division, P.O. Box 180, Jefferson City, MO 65102-0180.