Weather dominates 2008 conservation news

2008 was a year of extremes for wild Missouri and those who love the outdoors. High points included fishing records and record rains, while lows included weather-related woes for ground-nesting wildlife, such as quail and turkeys.
The Missouri Conservation Commission started the conservation year in January by inducting Nadia Navarrete-Tindall, of Columbia, into the Conservation Hall of Fame for her efforts on behalf of environmental education. Her diverse roles have included botanist, focus group facilitator, language trainer and environmental educator.
Also as 2008 got underway, Missourians were struggling to deal with the aftermath of devastating ice storms in January and December 2007. Those twin storms demolished countless trees and left millions of tons of woody debris on the ground, especially in southern Missouri. The Conservation Department launched a campaign to alert the public to the increased danger of wildfire this situation will pose for years to come.
The Conservation Department also responded to communities’ needs to clean up and replace damaged trees by adding $250,000 to the Tree Resource Improvement and Management (TRIM) program. The partnership with the Missouri Community Forestry Council provides reimbursements of up to $10,000 to public schools, government agencies and non-profit groups for tree planting and management on public land. (For photos, see mdc.mo.gov/news/images/fullsize/20080201.jpg and mdc.mo.gov/news/images/fullsize/20080229.jpg.)
Besides struggling with the aftermath of weather extremes in 2007, Missouri experienced another year of extreme precipitation. This time, the problem was not the kind of precipitation, but the amount.
Rainfall records maintained by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration show more rain fell in St. Louis in 2008 than in any year since official record-keeping began in 1870. Those records show the city received 57.96 inches of rain in 2008, compared to the long-term average of 38.75 inches. The previous record was 54.97 inches in 1982. Five of the highest annual totals in the past 130 years – all above 50 inches – have occurred in the past 25 years.
Amazingly, other places in Missouri had a far wetter year than St. Louis. Missouri State Climatologist Pat Guinan said the most rainfall recorded in Missouri in 2008 – more than 72 inches – fell near the town of Miller, in Lawrence County.
The rain gauge at Cape Girardeau collected 11.49 inches on March 18, establishing an all-time 24-hour rainfall record for the city. A gauge at Kirksville overflowed at 11.34 inches on July 25, making it impossible to know exactly how much rain fell there that day. Unofficial records around Kirksville showed that more than 12 inches of rain fell in the area the day of the great deluge.
All this rain caused residential, agricultural and business damage that still is being tallied. Nor were wildlife and conservation infrastructure spared. Ground-nesting birds and mammals, such as bobwhite quail, wild turkeys, rabbits and deer, suffered losses as repeated floods washed away nests or drowned young animals.
Quail and turkeys already were struggling to maintain their numbers in the face of awful nesting conditions over the past few years. They suffered a serious blow again this year, and hunters noticed the impact during fall hunting seasons.
Heavy rains that began in March and continued into April forced the closure of 11 conservation areas in southeastern Missouri during the spring turkey season, and flooding forced the cancellation of the managed deer hunt at Clarence Cannon National Wildlife Refuge in Pike County.
Besides curtailing hunting opportunities during the floods, high water reduced planting of crops and growth of native plants that normally provide food for waterfowl. That made Show-Me State marshes less attractive to ducks, geese and hunters in the fall.
Repeated flood tides on dozens of Missouri streams damaged...
Read the complete story in the January 8th edition.