Summer 2007: Volume 28, Number 3 - Missouri Prairie Foundation

MDC Assistance for Missouri Grassland OwnersBy Max AllegerThe Missouri Department ofConservation (MDC) provides technicaland financial assistance to all Missourilandowners. In many cases, MDCresponds to their requests by providingthe information necessary to help themmeet their land management objectives.In some instances, MDC staff helpslandowners participate in federal or stateincentive programs aimed at helping rareor declining wildlife species and plantcommunities.Making sense of the restrictions ofthe various incentive and cost-share programscan be daunting. To make mattersworse, landowners’ eligibility for suchprograms may vary depending on thelocation of their property and their managementobjectives. For example, someprograms are available only to farmers,while others target lands not intendedfor agricultural production. And, if landis located within a designated Quail andGrassland Bird Focus Area, a landownermay be eligible to receive higher costsharerates for select practices.Thankfully, MDC Private LandConservationists (PLCs) are availableto assist landowners in every MissouriCounty. PLCs are well informed about awide variety of natural resource managementtopics and have the latest informationabout federal and state incentiveprograms that may be available to helpdefray the cost of implementing a landowner’sgrassland management objectives.In the Spirit of Aldo LeopoldAldo Leopold, a forester and ecologist who worked in Wisconsin in theearly 1900s, had close family and professional ties to Missouri. Why is thisimportant? In the world of “wildlifers” he is known as the Father of Wildlife Conservationwhose ideas have been passed on to every contemporary wildlife management biologist. Leopoldhad a keen perception of the land and its conservation through a land ethic that still ringstrue. The PFW program employs many of Aldo Leopold’s principles to help connect Missourilandowners to their land.Leopold spent considerable time in Missouri conducting wildlife surveys in the late 1920s.The results of the surveys indicated that Missouri wildlife was in trouble; in fact, he expressedconcern about the decline of habitat for northern bobwhite and greater prairie-chickens dueto the surge in agriculture and the plowing of prairies. Leopold explained “We will have noconservation worthy of the name until food and cover for wildlife is deliberately, instead ofaccidentally, provided for, until abundant wildlife is the mark of the best rather than the worstPhotos by Kelly Srigley wernerFar left, native grasses andforbs now dominate thelandscape on this privateland in northeastern Missouri.At left is a private nativegrassland planting, whichis now benefitting northernbobwhite, bobolinks, grasshoppersparrows, andgreater prairie-chickens.