Environmental Echo

Missouri FFA and 4-H members participated in Hogs for Hunger during the Missouri State Fair. Swine exhibitors donated pigs which provide 36,125 servings to Feeding Missouri to address hunger.

At the 2026 Missouri State Fair, agricultural leaders, Missouri FFA and Missouri 4-H members and partners celebrated another successful Missouri Farmers Care Foundation Drive to Feed Kids. This year’s effort provided 825,196 meals for Missouri children and families facing food insecurity.

With 1 in 5 Missouri children experiencing hunger, the Drive to Feed Kids continues to unite Missouri agriculture in the fight against hunger. Since launching in 2017, the initiative has provided more than 14.5 million meals to children and families across the state.

“The Drive to Feed Kids highlights what Missouri agriculture can accomplish when we work together,” said Ashley McCarty, Executive Director of Missouri Farmers Care. “From farmers and ranchers to FFA and 4-H members, volunteers, businesses and community partners, thousands of people have united to help provide meals for Missouri children and families. We are proud to celebrate agriculture’s incredible impact and grateful to everyone who helped make it possible.”

This year’s activities at the Missouri State Fair capped another year of statewide hunger relief efforts led by Missouri’s agricultural community. Missouri youth organizations once again played a leading role:

More than 850 Missouri FFA members packed 252,564 meals during the Missouri FFA Day of Service at the Missouri State Fair while also donating fresh produce grown through student agricultural education projects.
4-H members raised resources to provide 250,271 meals through 4-H Feeding Missouri. 4-H clubs, FFA chapters, and collegiate organizations provided 145,748 meals in their communities through matching grants from the Missouri Farmers Care Foundation. Fairgoers supported Drive to Feed Kids during $2 Tuesday, contributing funds and non-perishable food donations equivalent to 53,231 meals.

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The 2026 Scenic America Symposium is at Missouri Botanical Garden, where guest speaker Don Corrigan will present on his new book, “Scenic Missouri.”

Sister Jan Hayes, RSM, longtime media instructor at Webster University, will lead a nature walk to view a labyrinth, wisdom garden, and cosmic trail at the Mercy Conference Retreat Center on North Geyer Road in Frontenac.

The Retreat Center Labyrinth is an expansive, outdoor 11-circuit walking meditation path located on the grounds. At 88 feet in diameter, it is twice as wide as a standard French Labyrinth and is considered one of the largest permanent outdoor labyrinths in Missouri.

Sister Hayes will be accompanied by Don Corrigan, professor and author, who will give a book talk on “Scenic Natural Wonders of Missouri.” More details are available for the 2-4 p.m., Sunday Sept. 20 event at the Retreat Center: 314-909-4646, or email: jhayes@mercycenterstl.org.

“Scenic Natural Wonders of Missouri: Lakes, Trails, Caverns and Vistas,” includes landscape portraits by photographer Diana Lindsley and prose by Corrigan. He is  a longtime journalism professor at Webster University Journalism Professor Don Corrigan.

Dawn Stringfield, executive director at the Retreat Center, has arranged for the event to be livestreamed at the retirement center for Mercy sisters, which  is also on the Mercy Center Campus.

Hikers and bikers, poets and philosophers, tree huggers and flower children, all will take delight in the book on the outdoors by Corrigan.

“Scenic Natural Wonders of Missouri” is an illustrated collection of 80 state nature sites. It’s the perfect guide for shutter bugs to locate memorable images, and to capture memories on their cell phones or digital cameras.

“My first outdoor guide in 2007 featured pencil drawings,” said Corrigan. “This new guide boasts colorful photos. Diana’s shots of cypress trees in Allred Lake, antlered beasts in Lone Elk Park, or 100,000 snow geese in Big State Park are awesome.

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MDC and the Weldon Spring Site Interpretive Center, Missouri Pollinator Network, St. Charles County Parks, Missouri State Parks, and other partners will host the Pollinator Palooza Festival on Saturday, Sept. 19, from 10 a.m.—3 p.m. at the Weldon Spring Site Interpretive Center in St. Charles.

As insect pollinators like monarch butterflies flit from plant to plant in search of food, they spread pollen crucial to the reproduction of their host plants.  More than 75 percent of the Earth’s flowering plants depend on pollinators. One out of every three bites of food we eat exists because of pollinating insects.  That’s worth celebrating.

The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) will join the Weldon Spring Site Interpretive Center, Missouri Pollinator Network, St. Charles County Parks, Missouri State Parks, and a host of other partners at the Pollinator Palooza Festival on Saturday, Sept. 19, from 10 a.m.—3 p.m.  This fun and free community festival takes place at the Weldon Spring Site Interpretive Center in St. Charles and has something special for all ages.

Pollinator Palooza will celebrate all pollinating creatures that help our plants thrive.  The event will offer interactive ways to learn about pollinator declines and what people can do to help.

The event will feature many hands-on activities such as kids’ crafts, games, exhibits, native garden demonstrations, food trucks, and more.  Missouri-made vendors with native plants, bird feeders and nesting boxes, local crafts, and produce will also be on hand.  Three different speakers from Missouri Botanical Gardens, MU Extension, and the St. Louis Zoo will be giving talks throughout the event. Visitors can purchase native plants and get helpful advice on how to grow pollinator-sustaining plants at home.  Guests can also enjoy viewing and hiking the site’s 150-acre restored Howell Prairie.  There will be learning activities both indoors and outdoors.

The Weldon Spring Site Interpretive Center is located at 7295 Highway 94, approximately two miles south of I-64/40. Parking will be available on-site. For more information, call 636-300-2600.

Pollinator Palooza 2026 sponsors include Planthaven Farms, Missouri Wildflower Nursery, Wild Ones St. Charles, Great Rivers Greenway and Ameren.

Pollinator Palooza contributors also include the Missouri Master Naturalists tri-chapters, Missouri Master Gardeners, MU Extension Office, and other affiliate organizations that advocate for the protection and conservation of all pollinators.

To learn more about native plants beneficial to insect pollinators, go to https://short.mdc.mo.gov/4sL.

by Don Corrigan

Ever since the introduction of gasoline engine, cars and roadways, our highly-mobile highway culture has exacted a tremendous toll on our companions – earth’s creatures.

Scientists estimate the animal fatalities in the U.S. number one million per day. Many early “roadkill scholars” hail from the Midwest, perhaps because of the first casualties on the “Mother Road” known as Route 66.

Creature killings by cars have littered Route 66 from Chicago, to St. Louis, and onto L.A. for 100 Years.  It should be no surprise that so-called “Roadkill Cafés” sprouted up along U.S. Highway 66 and featured menus with items like “Rack of Raccoon,” “Bambi Burgers,” and “Long-Gone Fawn.”

Route 66 was established on Nov. 11, 1926. Two years before that, scientists Dayton Stoner and his wife, ornithologist Lillian Stoner, began the first creature casualty counts on Iowa highways.

Their research has been followed by roadkill studies of zoologist Joseph Grinnell, James R. Simmons, and Roger Knutson who was mortified by the flattened fauna in his native Michigan. He wrote a book, “Flattened Fauna” which invites readers to count and monitor motorway mayhem in their own locales.

Roadway deaths have been chronicled in popular culture in paintings, sculpture, film, and music from Loudon Wainwright III’s “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road, to the more recent work of Phish with “Possum, Possum.” Animal roadway deaths are not all the same, as journalists and artists have discovered. Different creatures are hit at different times of the year, and they react to oncoming vehicles in different ways.

Here’s some insight on just a few of the losers in the mortal combat on our highways and byways:

• Take the SKUNK, for example. Roadkill skunks are memorialized in a very famous song by Loudon Wainwright III. The most famous cartoon skunk is Pepé Le Pew, who fell in love with the Loony Tunes character, Penelope Pussycat. Skunks are our friends because they eat enormous numbers of grubs, yellow jackets, mice, rats, and voles.

• POSSUMS as roadkill are memorialized in a very famous song by Phish. The most famous cartoon possum is Pogo Possum, the gentle, philosophical star of Walt Kelly’s iconic newspaper comic strip Pogo. Possums are our friends because they eat millions of ticks. And Climate Change has some very disease-prone ticks migrating northward in the USA. For example, the Lone Star Tick is transmitting Alpha Gal disease.

(This article is excerpted from a full presentation to be given by writer Don Corrigan at the Midwest Popular Culture Association (MPCA) conference in Muncie, Indiana, from Oct. 9-11. Corrigan is the author of American Roadkill by McFarland Publishing.)

A special event on state nature sites, sponsored by MoNep (Missouri Nature & Environmental Photographers), is slated for the theatre at Powder Valley Nature Center at 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 18.

The event is free and open to the public, but MDC registration is necessary. Register: https://mdc-event-web.s3licensing.com/Event/EventDetails/219665.

This presentation is by author Don Corrigan and photographer Diana Linsley, who recently published Scenic Natural Wonders of Missouri. They will share stories and images of some of the places of great beauty in Missouri.

Their book is an outdoor nature guide featuring more than 80 sites of natural wonder in the Show-Me State and offers valuable insights on how to visit and enjoy each of them.

For those interested the book will be available for purchase and signing at the event. Don Corrigan has served for more than 40 years as a professor of journalism at Webster University. He was also the editor and co-publisher of  Webster-Kirkwood Times, South County Times, and West End Word.

Diana Linsley is a MONEP member and has been a professional photographer for more than 40 years. She served as photographer for the Webster-Kirkwood Times, South County Times, and West End Word.

She has exhibited her nature photography at galleries throughout Missouri. Her work is on the website https://www.scenicnaturalwonders.com/.

Corrigan’s reporting on outdoor/environmental issues can be found at environmentalecho.com. He has published numerous books on the outdoors and popular culture, including Nuts About Squirrels and American Roadkill.

Corrigan and Linsley also will talk about their book and sign copies at the Conservation Expo at Cooper’s Landing on Sept. 12-13 in mid-Missouri. More information coming in early September on Diane Linsley’s nature website and at environmentalecho.com.