The albino deer and questions on conservation funding

After killing Cape Girardeau's albino buck, Jerry Kinnaman was, "Captivated by the strange beauty," of the animal. I, too, was captivated by the strange beauty of the creature that had in truth enriched our lives for several years. And a sadness. And a feeling that it was just so wrong.

How do we go so wrong, I wondered, reading Jerry's explanation: "I don't like killing. I get the feeling I'm helping conservation." What on earth?, I wondered.

And then, I got a clue how we go so wrong, when Jason Sumner from the Missouri Conservation Department described the killing as, "Cool and unique Â… something he (Jerry) should be proud of Â…"

In fact, consistent with Mr. Sumner's point of view, the Missouri Department of Conservation's primary agenda is, and has always been, to promote hunting.

Since the Department has been manipulating the deer population (since the 1940s), numbers have increased to the point where some folks complain of too many deer. So much for wildlife biology -- clear cut forests and encourage buck hunting -- and numbers of deer increase dramatically. Biologists know how predictably this works -- no secret there.

"We have more deer today than when Lewis and Clark came up through Missouri," Sen. Dan Clemens (R-Marshfield) said at a legislative hearing.

Does this mean we have to kill the beautiful, gentle creatures? If we have too many deer (a good thing admittedly for the small percentage of us who hunt), how have we gotten into this situation? And at what cost?

The answer requires a close look at the Missouri Department of Conservation, and, of course, the money trail. Many don't realize that we pay sales tax to support the department's hunting efforts.

Most of the Missouri Department of Conservation's $160 million budget comes from a 1/8 cent sales tax which voters narrowly passed in 1976. In 2015, the department expects to rake in $97 million from the tax. Money we all pay.

"The Missouri Department of Conservation is flush with cash," according to a Kansas City Star report earlier this year. "They've got more money than they know what to do with," said Robert Eck of Rolla, who donated land to the agency in 1989 but now regrets it.

One might reasonably hope this tax would support our state parks, lakes and forests, but, for the most part, it does not. Most of Missouri's lakes and forests are overseen by counties, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Corps. of Engineers. The Department of Natural Resources maintains our state parks and is not flush with cash from the Department of Conservation's sales tax.

Legislators have questioned whether voters would have passed the tax had they known it really wasn't to maintain state parks, lakes and forests.

Missouri taxpayers have put $1.5 billion into Missouri Conservation Department since 1976 -- money spent to optimize hunting opportunities (and on lavish entertainment, travel, etc. for agency officials). Money that surely would have been better spent by other agencies.

Maybe we could still be wise about how we spend our tax money. Maybe we could demand better accountability from our agencies and ourselves. Maybe the albino buck's horrible death could nudge us in the direction of curtailing the Missouri Department of Conservation's focus on hunting and their profligate use of taxpayers' money.

Stephen W. Stigers, M.D., is a resident of Cape Girardeau.