LETTERS: OZARKS PLAN AVAILABLE

To the editor:

The Missouri Conservation Department, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Corps of Engineers, other federal regulating agencies and the Nature Conservancy (an organization that buys up farmland for the government, among other things), is formulating a land-use control plan in the Ozarks. It is called the Coordinated Resource Management Plan.

Missouri has been divided into 10 regions. The draft copy of the plan for the Lower Ozarks is now available for public review and comment by calling 1-800-276-9334. If you value your property rights, you must call and request this plan. (Farming and mining are described as "potential threats" to the plan for ecosystem management, for example.)

Private and public property-rights organizations are mobilizing in Missouri to meet this head on. We need to stay on top of this.

M. THOMPSON

Salem