To the Commissioners of the Missouri Department of Conservation…

 

To the Commissioners of the Missouri Department of Conservation…

 

         I am sure most of you folks don’t know who I am, but my name is Larry Dablemont and I am and have been a full-time outdoor writer from the Ozarks of southern Missouri all my life.  My first outdoor newspaper articles began when I was 17 years old in 1965.  I have spent much of my life writing about conservation issues and have been awarded a Conservation Communicator Award in two states.  I have a wildlife management degree from the University of Missouri.  Once upon a time I wrote articles for the Conservationist magazine, and Outdoor Life, Field and Stream and Sports Afield magazines.  I have also written conservation articles for a dozen or so other national outdoor magazines as well.  At present I write a weekly outdoor column for about 40 newspapers in Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas.  You can see most of them on the Internet under larrydablemontoutdoors   I have published 12 books and published more than 100 of my own magazines which you can see on website on  my website…larrydablemont.com.  I have written more than 700 magazine articles and more than 6,000 newspaper columns for more than 200 newspapers and I am not done!  I am telling you this because I want you to know my writing is not a sideline it is my profession.

         I am writing you because for many, many years I have watched the MDC become one of the most corrupt agencies imaginable. Some of what I have investigated and can prove goes beyond belief!  Please read pages 86 through 89 in my enclosed magazine.  I have done the research to back up what I write and next year I will publish a book entitled, “The Truth About the Missouri Department of Conservation”.  In it I will tell what I have seen happening with the MDC and a large percentage of your employees, especially the conservation agents.  I suspect it will amount to photos and text including more than 300 pages and will be distributed free of charge all over this state.  

         If you would like I will meet with you at any scheduled meeting or individually and inform you as to what is happening in this agency that you have no idea of.  In that book I will print any responses your agency might have to the charges I am going to make, so it is not going to be a one-sided view of things.  But I will print the letters too, from dozens of people whose truthful complaints have gone unheeded.  If you folks have any interest in what is right and what is wrong in your agency, you need to know what is going on. And believe me, YOU DO NOT!  

         If the 1/8 cent tax so many of us worked to get passed years ago were to come to a vote now, the rural people I know and hear from would vote 80 percent against it, and I would work to see it repealed. For many years I was a writer who wrote hundreds of articles supporting the old Missouri Conservation Commission and then the new MDC for many years after.  It is time things change, time things are done to reverse the corruption and law breaking and violation of rights that I have seen.  The department policies your agency is supposed to stand behind are becoming meaningless to a large number of your employees.  I hope you will hear me because thousands and thousands of Missourians soon will.  I would hope to work with you if you are genuinely concerned.

 

Larry Dablemont, 

Publisher -- The Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal