Agency springs elk plan on public
Tax for conservation should be reviewed.
BY CHARLES E. KRUSE
Sunday, September 5, 2010
For several years Missouri Department of Conservation officials talked about wanting to have a close personal relationship with landowners in the state. It seems to me that their efforts would include open communication with landowner groups such as the Missouri Farm Bureau, whose members represent the largest number of acres of privately owned land in the state.
Yet Missouri farmers and ranchers had to read about it in the paper — the Missouri Department of Conservation announced it was considering reintroducing elk to the state of Missouri, and public workshops were both imminent and limited.
Why did we have to read about it in the paper? When the head of the Conservation Department, Bob Ziehmer, addressed the farmers and ranchers of Farm Bureau’s Statewide Resolutions Committee in June, he didn’t even mention it.
Ziehmer knew how important this issue is to farmers and other landowners, he knew the Missouri Farm Bureau has a policy against the reintroduction of elk on Missouri lands, and he knew about the Conservation Department’s reintroduction plans. Yet while addressing the very people with whom he and his colleagues professed a desire to have a close working relationship, he did not say a word about elk reintroduction — we had to find out about one month later in the newspaper.
This issue is not new. The Conservation Commission shelved a similar proposal almost a decade ago due to landowner concerns. It is pretty obvious a lot of work on the idea of reintroducing elk in the state was ongoing at the Conservation Department behind the scenes without notifying the people of Missouri until the program was already in an advanced phase.
Why wasn’t the public informed at the outset? Why such short notice for the “public workshops” the department held? Why were the meetings limited to only the three counties where elk would be released under the proposal when the end result will affect us all?
The people are not being given an opportunity to have a fair, legitimate, open conversation about this, and taxpayer dollars are already being spent on planning and site preparation by the Department of Conservation. It is obvious the Department of Conservation planned for the reintroduction long before making the ideas public, and it is also obvious it intends to follow through.
The Missouri Farm Bureau has several reasons for opposing reintroduction of elk. Farmers have legitimate concerns for their fields and crops — elk consume a lot of forage. Ranchers have legitimate concerns with elk damaging fences and harboring and spreading disease to their livestock.
Everyone should have legitimate concerns about the potential vehicle collisions with elk on our roads. Elk average between 500 and 700 pounds at maturity, about double the weight of mature deer and much taller. In a collision, it is more likely for the elk to come through the windshield into the passenger compartment.
While the intent is to reintroduce elk on public lands in remote areas, they will not be confined with fences. What is to keep them out of our crops, away from our livestock and off our roads and highways?
The Farm Bureau also has long-standing policy calling for another referendum on the one-eighth-cent sales tax that generates revenue dedicated to the Department of Conservation.
This tax was adopted by Missouri voters many years ago without a sunset clause — it just goes on and on. Perhaps it is time to revisit the tax.
Charles E. Kruse is president of the Missouri Farm Bureau.
