Vantage Point

Business as Usual?

"The flow of the river is ceaseless, and its water is never the same."

This old quote seems especially pertinent to the Conservationist. Kathy Love, who served as editor of the magazine since 1989, has moved up and out of that position to head the Conservation Department's Outreach and Education Division.

Under Kathy's guidance and talents, the Conservationist became a standard for similar publications in other states. Thanks to her efforts, the magazine was often honored in national competitions for both its content and design.

Kathy now supervises all the programs the Conservation Department relies on to inform or teach people about conservation. Her authority extends over school materials and programs, our conservation nature centers, the Conservationist magazine, our staff in metropolitan areas, as well as "Missouri Outdoors," the Conservation Department's weekly television program, and our video and publication library.

Her new duties take her away from the day-to-day production of the Conservationist, but the magazine will continue to serve you, thanks to the team of designers, artists, photographers and editors she forged and that she describes as "topnotch."

Kathy Love's editorship will be a hard act to follow, but fortunately, she's left nearly two years of the magazine already in production, so we have a running start.

Nevertheless, starting with this issue you will see some small changes that I hope you will like. For example, we've redesigned and lengthened the former "Almanac" section and are now calling it "News and Almanac."

The new section's title makes it almost self-explanatory. Not only will it continue to contain notices of upcoming events and short items relating to the outdoors, but it will provide you with current conservation news stories.

The news articles won't require the extensive layout and art and photographic support given to the rest of the articles in the magazine, so we can inform you about conservation news almost as soon as it happens.

In that section, too, we're reserving space to introduce you to the people who are writing the articles in the Conservationist. When possible, we will include their pictures, so you can see human faces behind the words you read.

We're planning other changes, too. We've always appreciated the unusual and fascinating photos of wildlife or nature that people send to us, and we're going to create a place for them in the Conservationist. We can't use them all, but we'll try to share at least one a month with you.

This is an exciting and challenging time. We're directing all our energy into delivering to you, month after month, at our very reasonable free subscription price (for adult Missouri residents), the best magazine of its kind in the country.

You deserve no less for your support of the Conservation Department.

Tom Cwynar