Community Conservation

Taking Action

 Kansas City Wildlands—To Battle!

• Group featured: Kansas City WildLands is a coalition of resource professionals, private conservation organizations and conservation-minded corporations and citizens.
• Group mission: To conserve, protect and restore remnant natural communities of the Kansas City region by involving people in the stewardship of the land.

Relatively undisturbed prairie, glade, savanna and forest habitats survive in and enrich the urban landscape of Kansas City. The WildLands coalition is dedicated to maintaining them for our current and future generations.

The coalition holds restoration workdays throughout the year, enlisting volunteers to assist with planting native wildflower seedlings and trees, removing invasive plants, clearing trash and other activities. They also produce the WildLands Newsletter, filled with informative and entertaining articles on local conservation issues and events.

WildLands is currently seeking volunteers for their largest workday of the year, To Battle!, on Nov. 1, from 9 a.m. to noon. The event will focus on removing invasive exotic honeysuckle and takes place at four separate locations: Blue River Glades, two sites along the Blue River Parkway, Isley Park Woods, and Hidden Valley. For more information, to register for a workday, or to get on the WildLands mailing list, contact Linda Lehrbaum, Kansas City WildLands coordinator, at (816) 561-1061, ext. 116, or e-mail Linda@bridgingthegap.org. The newsletter and more is also available online.

Support Share the Harvest

Not a hunter? You can help by sharing time or funding.

Approximately 5,569 hunters donated 260,908 pounds of venison to Share the Harvest last year. The program wouldn’t exist without these gracious gifts from the hunting community. However, volunteers are just as critical to the success of this effort, supplying funding, promotional support and manpower to help distribute the bounty.

Volunteers have strengthened Share the Harvest by distributing information and answering questions, donating time to local food shelf organizations, and holding fundraisers through charitable groups to help cover venison processing costs. Many individuals have also made direct donations to the program.

If your nonprofit club or organization would like to coordinate a Share the Harvest program in your area, contact your local conservation agent, or call the Conservation Department’s main office at (573) 751-4115.

Donations may also be made directly to the program through the Conservation Federation by contacting Dave Murphy, executive director, at (800) 575-2322, in person or by mail at CFM/Share The Harvest, 728 West Main Street, Jefferson City, MO 65101, or via e-mail at dmurphy@confedmo.org. All donations are tax deductible.