Common Sense Conservationists

[bigredbirdfan]

From Larry Dabblemonts Webpage. Thought some of us might want this information.

Common Sense Conservationists

WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH OUR GROUP, "COMMON SENSE CONSERVATIONISTS" IS TO BEGIN TO SHOW TO THOUSANDS OF MISSOURIANS JUST WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION, AND CAST A LIGHT OF TRUTH ON THEIR CONCEALED OPERATIONS, THE BELLIGERENCE AND ABUSE OF POWER BY MANY CONSERVATION AGENTS, AND THE HUGE AMOUNTS OF MISSPENT FUNDS WHICH WE ALL PROVIDE TO THEM THROUGH TAXES AND LICENSE FEES. I WANT TO DO MUCH OF THIS WITH A MONTHLY PUBLICATION, AN EIGHT PAGE NEWSPAPER, WHICH ALL MISSOURIANS CAN USE TO LEARN AND STAY INFORMED AND TO VOICE OPINIONS AND TELL WHAT THEY HAVE SEEN AND EXPERIENCED. AND I WILL USE IT TO TELL YOU OF THE ABUSIVE PRACTICES AND SPENDING AND CORRUPTION WHICH WE FIND IN THIS DEPARTMENT.

It may sound like an ambitious project, but "Common Sense Conservation" will

grow into an organization of thousands of Ozark country people, and perhaps

in time thousands of Missourians from all areas, combining to turn around

what has become a very corrupt and bureaucratic Missouri Department of

Conservation. With it we can develop leaders and a voice to stand up for

what is right.

We are not out to destroy them, but to see them become once again, an agency

devoted to the wise use of our natural resources in this state, and the

preservation of our state-owned areas, the sustaining of forests and streams

and of fish and wildlife, for hunters and fishermen and those who merely

enjoy the species we do not consume. I am not just a hunter and fisherman,

I love mature oak forests, and clean rivers, and song birds and all the

wildlife species which I simply see and enjoy without a gun in my hand at

all. I know there are millions of hunters and fishermen just like me in the

Midwest. We have long used our money to preserve and protect, and we want

to continue to do so.

The Missouri Department of Conservation has forgotten the "conservation"

part of their mandate, and much of the upper echelons are made up of

individuals who grew up in city suburbs, and have little interest in

anything but trying to benefit themselves from the tremendous amount of

money the department now has. Not all of them are that way, and I know it.

There are many who work for the MDC who are our allies. The department still

has some good honest people, who want to see strides made to preserve and

protect our wild places and wild creatures. Many of them have worked with

me, while concealing their identity in order to keep their jobs, and they

have vowed to keep helping us. I have learned much of what I know today

which upsets me so much because old time employees of the MDC are so upset

too, about what is happening.

The reason this agency has become so corrupt and inefficient is because

there is so much money, and they have been able to completely control the

use of it, and hide the results of what they are doing.

Right now, I can relate to you some situations in which conservation agents

have been more or less running roughshod over people who have done nothing

wrong. In the spring issue of my magazine, the Lightnin' Ridge Outdoor

Journal, I will print an account of a half dozen cases involving agents

which you will not believe. I can't write about all of those abuses in my

regular outdoor newspaper columns because there is just too much of it for

the space we have. We will begin to print some of those situations in this

website in coming weeks, as we gather all the facts.

As I point this out, remember that the Department wants to increase license

fees because they do not have enough money. And remember to that interest

they received on moneys they have in bank accounts amounted to about 3

million dollars in 2007 and 2008. You see what I mean when I talk about how

they keep any light from falling on so much of what they do?

We need you to join us as a member of "Common Sense Conservationists". No

one is going to make money out of this organization we hope to form. And we

need leaders who have nothing to gain but the hope to see things done right.

Each community will have it's own leaders, who will be volunteers. We

aren't asking for membership fees, or anyone to pay dues. We just need you

to join us and show that there are thousands of us who are fed up, and want

to create a change. If you have sat around and complained, you have done

nothing. Come and join us, and be part of an effort to put an end to what

has been happening with this agency so rich and powerful, they believe they

can do anything they want and answer to no one.

Think of the influence 10,000 of us can have on that agency if we demand a

change, and refuse to buy licenses, and organize to pay fines of any of our

members who are charged because of it.

Our first meeting was at Mtn. Grove, MO, and we had about 250 people

attending, and from it, signed up our first 300 members. We hope to be able

to begin sending our members the newsletter in February sometime, and we

solicit your views and experiences for that publication.

We intend to set up similar meetings in Ava, Salem, Gainesville,Bolivar, Nevada, Joplin, Cassville, and Piedmont in the next month. Contact me if you would like to help set up a meeting in your area.

Most people are not aware at the iron-clad hold the Missouri Department of

Conservation has on the news media. Television stations go to them for

one-sided information and newspapers constantly print the propaganda written

by MDC experts on the outdoors who see to it that only what they want to see

in print ever gets printed. The Springfield News Leader has a weekly

outdoor page which is almost entirely controlled by the local Missouri

Department of Conservation media specialist, Fran Skalicky. At one time

Skalicky was an employee of the News Leader, a sports reporter. He uses his

state office and is paid a state salary to spend much of his time donating

exclusive free material to the News Leader, who in turn allows no dissenting

views to be published concerning the MDC in that section.

I was once a regular outdoor columnist for that newspaper, but when local

ownership was ended and the paper taken over by the liberal New York Gannett

organization, I was called by the new editor, a lady by the name of Kate

Marymount, and told that I could no longer write anything critical of the

MDC and that the content of all columns would have to be approved by her

office. She said they would refuse to print columns which I wrote casting

any negative light on policies or practices of the Missouri Department of

Conservation. Shortly afterward, sports editor James Woods contacted me to

tell me, with a great deal of profanity, that he wanted to see no more of my

columns mentioning God in any way. Shortly afterward, I stopped writing the

column at Mrs. Marymount's insistence, because I was not willing to accept

those directives. Today I write an outdoor column for 27 different

newspapers in Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas. But many of those papers are

very hesitant to use much of what I write about the MDC because they are

afraid of the consequences of pressure from that agency.

As I post this, I am writing a letter to the present editor of the

Springfield News Leader asking him to allow us one column per month to point

out much of what is going on in the Department of Conservation, and to

express the views of many of us out in the Ozarks who feel that the truth is

not being told. I will offer that once-a-month column for no charge, and

use it to give experiences of some of the folks who have experienced

unwarranted abuse from Conservation Agents who are simply using their power

to run over people who have no defense. Judges will not hear them without

lawyers, and lawyers cost far more than the option of just paying a 100 to

200 dollar fine. If they will accept this once a month column, it will be

used to express views from all of you who are joining me in this group which

will come to be known as "Common Sense Conservationists". Please join us,

and let others around you know of what we are doing.

http://larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com...sts-what-i.html

[laker67]

This is one of several reasons that I do not like LD. Do not bother to bring your meeting group to my hometown. When this fizzes out he will be going after the Forestry division next.

[KCRIVERRAT]

You know, I use to read his columns in the Springfield paper after my in-laws moved to Shell Knob. Then all of a sudden he disappeared. Hmmmm........

[laker67]

You know, I use to read his columns in the Springfield paper after my in-laws moved to Shell Knob. Then all of a sudden he disappeared. Hmmmm........

He disappeared from several other papers as well. I say cheers to that editor that would not publish his crap. He used to talk about growing up on the Big Piney and the wooden river boats. I read somewhere that his childhood and growing up days were spent in Maryland or Vermont or some place like that. I suspect that his outdoor adventures were related once removed from the real person.

[bigredbirdfan]

Today in Springfield News Leader

Taking a 'Common Sense' approach to conservation

Larry Dablemont • February 22, 2009

An old-timer in the Texas County pool hall where I worked as a kid told me something I remember still. He said if something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you can always find someone who insists it isn't a duck.

For many years now, there are those of us who have watched the goings-on in the Missouri Department of Conservation and believe we see a great deal of questionable activity there. Last November, we began to gather at small town halls across southern Missouri to form an organization we have named Common Sense Conservationists, which presently has nearly 1,500 members.

A short time after we began to assemble, I received a phone call from Tim Ripperger, the assistant director of the MDC, who asked if he could get together with me and talk about what we were trying to do, and see if there is a way we could work together to realize some common goals.

A few days after a Common Sense Conservation meeting in Mountain Grove on Nov. 29 that attracted almost 300 people, Mr. Ripperger came to my office out here in the woods on Lightnin' Ridge, and we talked for nearly four hours.

We talked about this questionable activity and what many of us see as MDC agents running over innocent people in their work. There's where we had a problem identifying the ducks. Tim did not think there was any corruption involved, but we agreed to take a close look at some problems.

Since that time, we have made some small progress, and I am encouraged. I took one case to him involving a pair of agents attempting to make a hunter prove his innocence, and stripping him of his license for one year. Mr. Ripperger told me I needed to take a look at both sides, and I asked him to do the same. He did, and the case was reversed. In fact, he called the hunter and apologized for what he had been through. Clearly, in that case, there was no basis for what the agents had charged, and they had investigated nothing.

There are many such occurrences that have been brought to my attention and I believe are obviously situations where conservation agents have far overstepped their bounds, and people whom they charged were unable to defend themselves because the cost of getting a lawyer far exceeded the fine. If those situations come to the knowledge of the public, the Missouri Department of Conservation will suffer in the public opinion.

That is exactly what our goal as an organization is, to have a light shined on that organization and what it is doing.

That includes very questionable uses of our money, in ways the public knows little about, from payments for an easement to the paying of real estate taxes for a select group of people. The list here, of what looks like a duck to many of us, could fill this entire page.

Ripperger and I are discussing a reversal of what the MDC long insisted was a fundamental requirement of new hunters: the hunter safety courses that had to be taken and passed before a hunting license could be purchased. It is now easy to bypass that.

As of this past hunting season any new hunter 16 or older can simply pay an extra $10 as long as they are going out with a licensed hunter. You could be a new hunter who never picked up a gun and couldn't load it without help, and be hunting in a few hours just by paying an extra $10.

Ripperger argues it isn't just another money-making idea, that it is necessary to do this in order to keep new hunters entering the field. And so I asked, "Why not just give the by-pass card to the new hunter for free? Why charge for it?" He is now pondering that question, with many others we have for him.

Finally, we have a voice the MDC is listening to.

If you would like to join our new conservation movement, you may contact me at Common Sense Conservation, Box 22, Bolivar, MO 65613 or e-mail us at lightninridge@windstream.com. There is no membership fee.

Larry Dablemont is an outdoor writer and photographer. He lives in Bolivar.

[trout fanatic]

I do not know this gentleman but I do agree with the basic premise of keeping the DOC's feet to the fire so to speak. I would like them to be more direct in dealing with the sporting public and I would REALLY like them to confront political issues (like allowing a large commercial cattle/hog/chicken farm to operate near a public fishing stream). Maybe it would take something like this to make a difference? By the way, I like the job that they do in our state I just think they could be more forthright about it and I do sense a lot of political back stabbing on some issues.

[Poke 'Em]

Our first meeting was at Mtn. Grove, MO, and we had about 250 people

attending, and from it, signed up our first 300 members.

Sounds like vote early and vote often.

[Al Agnew]

I've had some correspondence with Larry and we keep trying to get together for a fishing trip. Other than that, I have no real way of judging the merits of his beefs against MDC.

I don't really know what to think about what he's trying to do. On the one hand, I agree that it's desirable to hold MDC's feet to the fire. On the other hand, there are a lot of people in the Ozarks who simply don't like authority of any kind and look for any way they can to throw a monkey wrench in the works. If Larry has the facts to back up his assertions, then more power to him, but if this group is going to be nothing but a gripe-fest, then it'll do more harm than good.

[ozark trout fisher]

Agnew, how do you really feel? you are way too tough on the MDC. I don't know what is going on at the upper levels, but I know every conservation officer I have met is very nice, and I can tell they are there to help. Think where we would be without them. You must know something I don't, thats for sure. I have no problem making suggestions to the MDC, I just did in the poll about the trout park zones, but I believe such a wholesale attack is completely out of line. Unless somebody gives me some evidence of these abuses,(I am sure they occur occasionally, but I bet not often) I certainly won't be joining any organization opposing our excellent department of conservation. I read Larry's blog, and at one point he suggested that we stop buying licenses. I hope he doesn't like to catch any stocked fish, hunt in conservation areas or anything like it, because doing this would cause the conservation to be bankrupted. Is that what you want?

[bigredbirdfan]

I think a little accountability outside of their own organization structure is clearly no bad thing. Some people simply are in lock step with whatever the federal, state or local government does. I feel sorry for you folks. I'm no hippy, but come on man at least question authority.

An open forum that they don't hold sounds like a real good start.