Fri, 03 Sep 2010 07:21:53 -0400
Conservation is the preservation of a web of life at which man is the center. Without a strong and dedicated conservation department, hunters and fishermen stand to lose the most. Photo by Sondra Gray
I walked into the lobby of the Missouri Department of Conservation in Jefferson City, and there on the walls were murals by one of the greatest wildlife artists Missouri has ever known, Charles Schwartz. If you have never been there, and have never seen those fantastic wildlife paintings surrounding you, you should see it sometime. Schwartz was such a gifted person; his paintings make fish and wildlife come alive on a canvas. He was a dedicated man who lived fairly simply, and he was a man who believed in conservation… the wisest use of our natural resources.
The murals weren’t there when I first entered that building, more than forty years ago, just an awe-stricken 18-year-old kid on his way to meet the legendary Jim Keefe, editor of the “Conservationist” magazine. I remember him there in those newly built offices, smoking on his pipe at the time, reaching out to shake my hand. Mac Johnson was there too. The two of them put out a black and white monthly magazine for the MDC that wasn’t at all flashy, because in those days they didn’t have the millions that go into that same magazine today. But it was winning Missourians over to a way of thinking about our wildlife, our forests, our rivers, and they were true conservationists in a time when there weren’t millions of dollars to work with. Their
publication did a job today’s “Conservationist” magazine seems to have forgotten.
Twenty years later, it was Mac Johnson, just before he retired, who alerted me to a change taking place that was worrying him. The Conservation Department was becoming rich because of the new 1/8th cent sales tax. But were there dark clouds on the horizon. I didn’t think there was a reason for it at the time, but some of the old timers in the MDC were worried, and rightly so.
Last week, I was there for an interview with the enforcement chief, Larry Yamnitz, and we talked for over three hours. I wish there was room here for everything we discussed, but there isn’t. If you wish to read more about it, you can find it in the October-November issue of our magazine, “The Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal”.
Mr. Yamnitz doesn’t know it, but we met before, briefly, many years ago when we were both a lot younger, and he was just a young conservation agent in Texas County, on the headwaters of the Big Piney River where I grew up. He was a good one, and there were others like him. But one of the agents he worked with back then was a corrupt, law-breaking agent who I wrote about, and who was eventually fired, although it took a long time for it to happen.
Yamnitz knows there are problems today with many of the conservation agents who work for the MDC, but he and I differ on how big the problem is. I can tell you this, I know if he has his way, there will be changes for the better. He is an honest man who wants to see things done right, and won’t be a part of a situation where innocent people are targeted. There isn’t any doubt in my mind about that, but I do doubt if he can change much by himself.
He is faced with the knowledge that one of his agents broke the law awhile back, and that because of that agent's actions, the MDC had to pay about a million dollars in settlement because of a law suit. That agent is still working, even promoted, and for the life of me, I can’t understand why. I don’t think Yamnitz can do a thing about it, because it happened before he became the Enforcement Chief. Neither he nor anyone else in the Department can talk about it, because the MDC lawyers had it arranged in the settlement, decreed by the judge at their request, that no one can discuss it at all.
In such a way, the Missouri Department of Conservation hides the entire event, and keeps the story from getting out to the public. Few Missourians know it even happened, as no news outlet across the Ozarks at least, has even mentioned it.
In three hours, we talked about a lot of things, many individual cases which he agrees need to be looked into. He told me that if we want to bring situations involving misdeeds of any agents to his attention, he will be there to listen, and that he will do something about it if there are proven allegations of agents doing things out of line or targeting innocent people. Yamnitz knows the situation… once charged, few people have the resources to hire a lawyer and be heard in court. The fine you pay is a fraction of what it takes to be “proven innocent”.
Again, there isn’t room here to discuss much of what has been going on, but he acknowledged that one agent had indeed confiscated a deer head and used it for his own private purpose. He says that agent was “reprimanded” but not fired. I believe that many deer heads have been taken which were never accounted for, and perhaps sold for thousands of dollars, when the hunters whom they were taken from were actually innocent of charges brought against them. And what I hope to do is perhaps find out where some of them went.
Mr. Yamnitz agreed to talk about, and look into, some of the cases I have written about in this column, and that indeed is making some progress. And he sincerely does want to meet with Missouri outdoorsmen who have bona-fide complaints against his agents, and I am going to try, through this column, to bring some of those folks before him. One taxidermist I wrote about a few weeks ago will be one of the first people involved in one of those meetings, but there will be others.
Yamnitz and I discussed the problem of this four-point rule, which deer hunters face over the northern two thirds of the state. He told me that no one should have to leave a deer in the woods because they thought they were shooting at a legal deer, and made a legitimate mistake. He says that if anyone has a situation where they made a mistake and it is obvious that a six-point deer could have been mistaken for a seven pointer, they should contact an agent and bring the deer in, without fear of being ticketed. To me, this is a real breakthrough.
I know we are losing hundreds of deer in many of the northern Ozark counties because of this ridiculous rule, and although he didn’t come out and say it, I think Yamnitz sees it as such, and so do many of the more experienced agents who have hunted deer themselves. Again, this rule needs to be abandoned, as it is something overwhelmingly opposed in all but a few northern counties, supported and put in place by the “trophy hunting” faction. But until it is changed, remember that if you kill a buck this fall that appeared to have four points on one side, but didn’t, you should not leave it in the woods, or try to sneak it out of the woods, and risk getting a citation. Contact and agent and ask to keep the deer and utilize it.
Again, there isn’t enough room here for all we talked about, but I am optimistic because of the interview. Next week I will mention the recent court case in southeastern Missouri where a judge ruled against the MDC in a deer-dog violation charge. It is a development that will have some very far-reaching consequences, and Ozark conservationists need to know about it.
See pictures of my recent trip to Canada on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com, and information about the swap meet this fall. Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613, or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net
If ever there was a movie to make a generation of children wish they could act as mother and migration guide to a flock of adorable Canadian geese, Fly Away Home is it. To be fair, it sort of has the market covered; the premise of the movie is so specific and original that we can safely say there is no other family film quite like it. While it may have given us all some unrealistic expectations about the boundless potential of our parents to swoop in (literally) and save the day, Fly Away Home is ultimately a feel-good story about the power of family and the triumph of doing the right thing. Plus, it showcases the surprising cuteness of Canadian geese. Those little guys are adorable.
Like all good 90s family films with a focus on animals, the story hinges on some anonymously evil bad guys who are inexplicably hell bent on destroying the benign, unoffensive project. In real life we rarely find such strong-willed opposition to these types of sweet, well-intentioned endeavors. For the sake of plot development, Fly Away Home follows the underdeveloped universal bad guy formula with little deviation. It does so skillfully enough, though, that we are convinced a local game warden can be a calculating, ne’er do well evil plotter while area ornithologists have the potential to save the day.
The story is actually very loosely based on a true story, but truthfully the movie explores the general plot in a way much more heartwarming and family-friendly than the inspiration. Fly Away Home gives us a little of everything from the family film value variety pack: relationship development between father and daughter, strong bonds formed with loyal animals, and an exciting and potentially dangerous journey. Before the release of this movie, it’s a safe bet to assume none of us had a deep desire to fly a glider painted to resemble a goose, but the movie’s power of suggestion was strong enough to implant the idea deep within all of us. I’m still waiting for my chance, but the best I’ve been able to scrounge up is a flight in a glider painted like a rogue cockatoo. I’ve got to say, it just wasn’t the same.
Fly Away Home (1996) - Movie Trailer
Uploaded by Silverhawk82. -
Fly Away Home opens on a tragedy in traditional fairy tale fashion with the untimely death of main character Amy’s (Anna Paquin) young mother. If we have learned anything from Disney films, it is that if you seek to become a hero, it’s pretty imperative that your mother is killed off in the first fifteen minutes of the film. Amy is no exception, and the tragic car crash leaves her poised to emerge as a strong sympathetic hero a la Bambi, Jasmine, Cinderella, Snow White Sleeping Beauty, or any of those other half-orphaned Disney protagonists.
Amy’s father (Jeff Daniels) arrives from Canada to transport her from her home in New Zealand to his in Ontario. Their relationship is understandably strained considering he’s never taken any prior interest in her existence. Nonetheless, they forge ahead under tense circumstances, with Amy resenting her father and his live-in girlfriend (Desperate Housewives’ Dana Delany) the whole way through.
Following a construction incident near a local Canadian geese nesting area, Amy discovers a batch of abandoned unhatched eggs. As the goslings hatch, their natural imprinting instinct leads them to believe Amy is their mother, cementing their status as completely inseparable. By this point, of course, we’ve gone too far blissfully uninterrupted by highly motivated obscure animal-hungry villains. In this case, the local game warden is adamant about clipping the geese’s wings--an action that leads Amy to throw a popcorn bowl in the general vicinity of his head. Ouch.
Cuteness--and some weirdness--ensues, with several sequences involving the geese following Amy around a field and joining her in the shower. Amy’s father Thomas is excessively determined to see these geese through to migration, so much so that he researches some land in the US that he could purchase as their nesting area. I’ve heard of trying to buy your kid’s love, but buying a plot of land for a group of geese that think your daughter is their mother? Seems a little excessive.
Thomas hatches (hatches!) a scheme to teach the birds to migrate south using a small aircraft. After many sporting tries and dramatic near-miss incidents, Thomas and Amy assemble the ultimate migratory vehicle complete with Canadian goose exterior paint job. They practice their vee formations and set out for North Carolina without so much as a map.
Like all good family adventures, they endure some troubling trials and tribulations but ultimately emerge victorious in their mission. The duo attracts a great deal of media attention and fanfare, though they nearly lose their intended land to developers. Thomas’s plane breaks down, Amy goes it alone, and--spoiler alert--she makes it. I know, it’s shocking to see a happy ending like this for a children’s movie. Truthfully, though, Amy has us rooting for her the whole way.
Fly Away Home is ultimately heartwarming and sweet without being overly corny. Unless you are made of stone, you probably shed a tear or two at the film’s conclusion when we saw photos of the geese returning to Amy’s farm in Ontario the following spring. Assuming I don’t have a large contingency of granite readers out there, it’s safe to say you all sniffled a bit at those credits. It’s okay, let it all out--after all, if you can’t cry at the triumphant return of a gaggle of Canadian geese that beat the migration odds, what can you cry at?
