Missouri Conservationist: Jan 2000

A summary of the Missouri Department of Conservation's Annual Report.

Early explorers were the first to collect and catalog our state's unique flora.

My father, Warren Wiedemann, conservation agent for Franklin County, recently retired after 31 years with the Conservation Department. During those three decades he and my mother raised five children, along with innumerable squirrels, skunks, rabbits, raccoons, possums, coyotes, foxes and more.

It's been over 100 years since the first shipment of McCloud River rainbow trout eggs arrived in Missouri from California. One of the places those first fish were released was southwest Missouri's Crane Creek. Largely overlooked as the years passed, descendants of the McCloud rainbows still swim in the chilly waters of the little creek that threads its way through dairy country.

Introduced species wipe out native wildlife and disrupt natural systems.