Richard Leopold

About 60 area residents attended a wide-ranging public forum hosted by the state's top conservation official Wednesday night.

Richard Leopold, director of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, held the forum at the Gull Point State Park lodge.

"I think the tone was pretty positive for the most part," said Tammie Krausman, the public affairs coordinator for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. "Sometimes those public meetings can be quite contentious."

The agency is taking a different approach with the series of public forums. The meeting at Gull Point was the first of seven scheduled around the state.

Often, DNR forums are held to address a specific topic. Krausman said the main goal of Wednesday night's event was to hear a broad array of concerns. Leopold was asked about grassland bird species, bees, climate change, the deer population and regulations for house boats.

"There were questions everywhere from limiting rural crop agriculture to ethanol to invasive species and zebra mussels to requests for more equestrian trails," she said.

The forum also was a chance for the director to outline the department's top 10 priorities. A statewide water plan is one of the director's highest initiatives. The most recent plan was completed in 1985.

"What the director wants to do is a comprehensive water plan that will include not only water quality, but water quantity and even floodplane management -- it's a hot topic now," Krausman said. "There was going to be a little floodplane section in it before, but I think it's going to be a little bigger now."

Krausman said the Iowa Department of Natural Resources would like to approach its role with more of an ecosystem perspective, including work on climate change. For example, birds are taking different migration routes and different insects emerge at different times as a result. Those are developments Leopold's office would like to monitor.

Leopold also wants to maintain support from lawmakers for a $150 million, sustainable annual funding source for natural resource and water quality protection.

The director is developing a hunting access program. Farmers want to keep deer out of their fields, but may not want outsiders hunting on their property and claiming a prized buck. Land prices make the state purchase of rural acres less feasible.

"He really wants to get more acres available for hunting," Krausman said.

The department is trying to "walk the walk" in terms of environmentally-friendly construction.

"We want to be the leader in permeable pavement, rain gardens, energy efficiency, geothermal -- things like that," Krausman said. "Any construction that we're doing is going to be green."

Other DNR priorities on the director's list include:

* a state air plan to reduce greenhouse gases and control the impact of livestock emissions;

* an emphasis on environmental education to make the most out of 85 state parks, its 400,000 acres of land and 1,200 resource professionals;

* an effort to locate regional DNR centers in heavy-traffic locations including a possible center in the Iowa Great Lakes region;

* and a joint effort with Iowa State University and the Iowa Department of Agriculture for a five-year $22.8 million project for odor mitigation research on livestock operations statewide.

Other forums will be held at state park locations near Des Moines, Eldora, Oskaloosa, Drakesville, Dundee and Stanton.

"I'm looking forward to sharing some of the important initiatives under way within the department, but more importantly, I really want to hear from Iowa's citizens," Leopold said. "One thing I am particularly proud of is the rapport that the DNR has with the public. This is a relationship we value highly within the DNR."