LETTERS: DNR PURSUES LAND GRAB

To the editor:

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources continues to do its part in bringing about the One World Woods bioreserve scheme in Reynolds County. The DNR is trying to snatch another 500-plus-acre tract of woodland near Johnson Shut-ins State Park. Completely ignoring the will of the voters in Reynolds County who overwhelmingly voted down the parks and soil tax back in November, the DNR continues to act like the land-grabbing, power-hungry, Gestapo force that is has already proven itself to be many times in the recent past. The primary reasons that Reynolds countians voted down the parks and soil tax along with Iron and Madison counties is that the people of this region are fed up with the DNR and its obvious attempt to take over the county a parcel of land at a time.

The DNR stands advised from this time on that the people, especially of Reynolds County as indicated by the November 1996 vote, do not want nor expect the DNR to continue to buy any more land for any reason in Reynolds and surrounding counties. If the DNR wants to spend its ill-gotten gains, it should be forced to spend it around St. Louis and Kansas City where it so convincingly lied to metropolitan voters about the contrived need to continue the parks and soil tax.

The DNR already has more thousands of acres in Reynolds and surrounding counties than it intelligently and practically knows how to utilize. The sacred-cow mentality of no hunting or any other practical use of the resource is something that Danny Staples, Don Koller, Wayne Crump and Jim Graham need to get together on and rid the Ozarks of the menace to a free society that operates under the guise of environmental and resource protection and calls itself the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. While they are at it, they can defang Jay Nixon, the DNR's half-baked but dangerous attack dog.

ED STEWART

Middlebrook, Mo.