Public Services

brings the outdoors into Missouri homes with award-winning features on subjects as diverse as caving, prairies, wildflowers, fishing, birding and endangered species.

Conservation Education Services

PROPOSAL

• To locate on Department lands a system of Conservation Interpretive Centers, built on a theme of the prevailing habitat (water, marsh, upland, forest, etc.). Each would be a regional services center, staffed with personnel to help solve landowner problems and answer questions about wildlife, fisheries and forestry management. Each area would, even though it might be a hunting and fishing area, also serve as a demonstration area. Personnel would work from these centers in a several county area, formulating management plans and solving landowner conservation problems. Each center would have audio and visual exhibits, as well as informed personnel to interpret for visitors.
• To conduct leadership seminars and teacher workshops in environmental awareness in the search for solutions to environmental problems.
• To broaden the hunter and gun safety education program.
• To help establish and implement a conservation curriculum in all elementary and secondary schools. To furnish advice and materials, including plantings, for outdoor laboratories or nature study areas.
• To establish a staff of educators equipped to bring field trips to schools without access to outdoor laboratories.
• To expand help to youth groups and camps.
• To develop and distribute specific packets directed to wildlife, forestry and environmental education and management.

Keeping the Promises of Design:

• The Conservation Department has constructed conservation nature centers in St. Louis, Blue Springs, Springfield and Jefferson City. A conservation nature center in Cape Girardeau is being planned.
• The newly opened Discovery Center in Kansas City will enable inner city residents to learn about conservation and stay in touch with nature.
• Demonstration practices have been installed on conservation areas and on private lands to help landowners improve the productivity of their land while benefiting wildlife.
• In 1988, hunter education became mandatory for all Missouri hunters born on or after Jan. 1, 1967. Nearly 1,000 hunter education classes, taught by outdoor skills supervisors, conservation agents and more than 1,800 volunteer hunter education instructors, certify 28,000 to 30,000 hunters each year.
• The Conservation Department conducts a variety or workshops, courses and camps, many offering college credit, to acquaint teachers with outdoor activities and help them include environmental education into their classrooms.
• Education consultants are stationed in each of the state's 10 regions to assist teachers working to develop outdoor classrooms and to provide natural resource information to their students.

Updates

Update: The duties of protection agents have grown to include a coordinated program of education, information, law enforcement and one-on-one contacts. About 10 percent of the Conservation Department's budget goes to equip, staff and operate the Protection Division.