Conservation begs for fresh faces

The good old days seemed well past Wednesday evening in a St. Paul hotel banquet hall that wasn't quite chock-full. Tables at the same event that only a few years ago were filled sat empty or nearly empty, and the point of the gathering — to allow movers and shakers of the field sports to rub elbows with movers and shakers of the Legislature — seemed somehow lost with only six lawmakers in attendance. Six out of 201.

The event was the annual banquet fundraiser sponsored by the Minnesota Outdoor Heritage Alliance (MOHA), a good group.

Not many years ago, the late Don McMillan headed up MOHA, and everyone benefited from his leadership, fish and wildlife especially. But McMillan, an energetic hunter-dentist-Washington lobbyist who knew hokum when he saw it, was a rare bird indeed, and his loss has been felt widely.

So it goes, and so it is going in Minnesota, with, as at the MOHA gala, most of the same conservation advocates making the same pleas to the ever-fewer elected officials who give a rip.

The gravity of the problem is self-evident, the consequences of its continuance dire. Without an infusion of new blood among Minnesota's conservation supporters, legislative and otherwise, the state's natural resources will continue their downhill slide, their fate sealed with a coffin's slam, as, one by one, the old guard wobbles into the sunset.

Yet even the kingpins of the sporting crowd seem stumped to respond. This includes Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Landwehr, who spoke Wednesday evening exclusive of pointing alarmingly to the elephant in the room, namely that the state's clean water, healthy landscapes and resurgent wildlife populations can no longer be ensured, given the aging of its primary advocates, hunters and anglers.

Here's a simple idea:

Next year, restrict entrance to the same MOHA wingding to those who bring a guest, preferably a young whippersnapper age 20 to 45.

In fact, any guest with a pulse in that age range or another would satisfy this minor brainstorm.

Such would be a start — especially if replicated at Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, Minnesota Deer Hunters Association, Ruffed Grouse, Minnesota Waterfowl Association and other, similar shindigs — in what could be an intensified attempt to recruit new people to the conservation fold.

The objective would be less to sell these recruits hunting and fishing licenses than to leverage their energy and brains, acknowledging in the process that not one big new conservation idea in the state's recent history originated among state bureaucrats, DNR or otherwise.

Thus the need for far more people power.

To accomplish this, fish and wildlife managers, policymakers and elected officials charged with seeing the big picture of resource management should exponentially broaden efforts to recruit hunters, anglers and other outdoors advocates beyond the usual means — i.e., lowering license costs and sponsoring mentored hunts, etc. — to the much more ambitious goal of disassembling the state's heavily centralized conservation authority and finances.

Put another way, to secure the much-needed energy and ideas of more Minnesotans, more of them must be empowered (sorry) to maintain and improve their own backyards, defined here as regions demarcated by watersheds or other landmarks.

A special conservation commission appointed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty in 2007 reached the same conclusion.

"In examining the current state of our natural resources and current stewardship efforts,'' the commission concluded, "[We] believe … all Minnesotans must play a part.''

Lo these nine years hence, that's not happening.

Nor will it happen unless the DNR and, as necessary, related agencies are ordered by this governor or a future governor to reorganize the state's conservation efforts regionally, if only on a test basis.

Then and only then can the power of the state's many conservation groups, together with that of related state and federal agencies, be brought to bear on problems resolved by locally engaged Minnesotans.

Like the idea or not, acknowledge this: What we're doing now isn't working.

It's said often, and correctly, that the nose dive of the state's duck, pheasant and songbird populations is the functional equivalent of canaries dying in coal mines, in that both portend bigger, and deadlier, problems to come.

Wednesday evening, the lack of fresh faces and interested legislators in the MOHA crowd foretold a similarly dire conclusion.

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com