EDITORIAL: A fitting honor for Carol Davit

Feb. 28—We enthusiastically second the recent decisions by the Conservation Federation of Missouri to honor Carol Davit and Jeff Cantrell.

Davit, executive director of the Missouri Prairie Foundation, was named Conservationist of the Year.

According to CFM: "Carol has taken MPF to a higher level in her tenure as executive director. Fundraising, partnerships, land purchases, scientific research, education and outreach efforts, staffing, the Grow Native! program, the Missouri Invasive Plant Council, and more have increased significantly or originated under her leadership."

A partial list of MPF's acquisitions in recent years would include the Rae Letsinger Prairie, in 2021, near Sarcoxie; the Carver Prairie in Newton County in 2015; the nearby Noah Brown's Prairie two years later; the Northwest Lawrence County Prairie in 2018 and the Linden Prairie in 2014, near Mt. Vernon.

Davit has worked for more than two decades in conservation and environmental protection, and her group's work goes beyond acquiring remnant prairies to restoring and preserving them, to advocating for native plants and elimination of invasive species, and to providing outreach and education for landowners and communities.

We'd also like to applaud CFM's decision to recognized Cantrell as Conservation Communicator of the Year.

A Missouri Department of Conservation naturalist, who works out of the Neosho and Joplin MDC offices, Cantrell is someone many residents will recognize from his presentations and classes, and many school children will know from his visits.

CFM said of Cantrell: "An ecologist at heart and in training, Jeff looks at everything holistically and encourages those he works with to look at how everything is interwoven and find the conservation connections. He is an expert ornithologist, botanist, and entomologist, among other fields. His ecological knowledge is a foundation upon which he teaches and interprets conservation biology. He lives what he teaches and has restored prairie and woodlands all over the Ozarks, on his own farm as well as other properties."

Like Davit, he also has fought hard for Southwest Missouri prairies, as well as other endangered landscapes and species.

Today, only one-tenth of 1% of Missouri's original prairie survives, and that diverse ecosystem supported many grassland birds, plants, mammals and more, not to mention the genetic wealth that cannot simply be recreated. What if the real value of the prairie and other original landscapes is not in the acres that can be plowed but in the genes and diversity of all those plants and animals that evolved over eons to form complex natural communities — genes that may have unimaginable potential as food sources or to cure diseases?

We congratulate Davit and Cantrell on their honors, and thank them for their dedication and commitment. And we challenge our readers to go one better: Get out to one of the prairies in Southwest Missouri this spring, when they are at their most spectacular.

Then consider supporting the Missouri Prairie Foundation. Go to their website, where you can become a member, make a donation, learn about upcoming education and Grow Native events, and so much more.