Conservation department's efforts have made these the golden da

Some people wax poetic about those days of yesteryear. Fields of gold, towering stands of timber, bass the size of a Buick, wildlife bounding over hill and dale. Those word trimmers were not describing Missouri between 1900 and 1950.

Forest fires, over-timbering and little if any game and fish regulation combined to cheat earlier citizens of nature's bounty. To make matters worse, the Great Depression of the 1930s ripped the stitches out of the economy. All of which makes it even more incredible that Missourians saw their way to passing Amendment Four in 1936, creating the state's first bipartisan conservation commission. That commission set the stage for what was to become the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Besides getting fire under control -- a third of the state burned each year in the '30s; less than one-third of 1 percent was on fire in 1955 -- the MDC embarked on what was at the time a novel wildlife repopulation strategy: Take care of the habitat and those who live there (wildlife) will flourish.

That's what conservation did. From a statewide population of 2,500 deer and 1,500 turkey in 1937, numbers rebounded sufficiently in 1959 to actually open a hunting season. Ditto for turkey in 1960.

Federal funding helped the fisheries division inventory and study the state's finned population. As fires and over-timbering were brought under control, large swaths of once-bare ground next to rivers and streams began to reforest. When the rains came, trees and other vegetation kept a lot more of the soil on the land and out of the streams.

The fisheries staff breathed a sigh of relief. Fish just breathed.

In the 1960s, the department and conservation leaders around the state met to discuss the future. Three nationally known conservationists studied the department. Their report recommended expanding conservation programs to include nongame wildlife, adding hunting and fishing opportunities and managing the outdoors for other types of recreation.

The MDC put together a long-range plan: The Design For Conservation. To finance it, a citizens committee proposed dedicating one-eighth of 1 percent of the sales tax to conservation. This broad base would share the cost of conservation to all Missourians, not just those who hunted and fished.

Missourian passed Amendment One in 1976.

With expanded funding, the department launched a three-pronged effort: begin to acquire land of significant natural resource value, expand public services and increase research and development.

Today, the MDC has restored prairie, savanna and wetland communities; brought back many species from near extirpation; built fish hatcheries; stocked rivers and lakes; created a private lands division to help landowners; brought thousands of conservation classes and materials to teachers and students across the state; built nature centers; expanded hunter education; built river and lake public accesses; enforced game laws; restored and added thousands of acres of forest each year; and generally made Missouri the envy of most fish and game departments.

Yet much remains to be done. About one-fifth of Missouri's plants and a quarter of Missouri's vertebrate (backboned) species are listed in the MDC's "Species of Concern" publication. This means they are threatened, endangered or exceedingly rare. The three big culprits placing those plants and critters at risk are pollution, habitat loss and invasive species.

But as the last 75 years of conservation in Missouri have shown, people can work together to conserve and restore their state's natural resources, which gives some an opportunity to wax poetic about the profusion of nature's bounty in the present tense.

Phil Helfrich handles community outreach for the Missouri Department of Conservation. Some of the information for this column comes from "The History of the Conservation Movement in Missouri."