This is an excerpt from Rex Nelson's column in regard to trends in Arkansas.   The excerpt we've reproduced here is in regard to the trend on conservation. Find Rex's unabridged column here:   NWAOnline

Some trends that matter

By Rex Nelson

Posted: December 31, 2017 at 1:46 a.m.

It was a year that saw me return to full-time newspaper work after more than two decades away. That meant more time to travel the state in search of stories. I talked to people in every section of Arkansas, drove down highways I hadn't been on in years, read local newspapers, listened to small-town radio stations, ate in long-forgotten restaurants and eavesdropped on conversations at adjacent tables in an attempt to determine what topics Arkansans were talking about in 2017.

I discerned several trends that, if they continue, will make Arkansas a better place to live. These trends weren't the result of anything politicians at the local, state or federal levels did. They weren't projects that the Arkansas Economic Development Commission announced. They didn't make the front page of this newspaper. They were the result of the hard work of people across the state who were determined to make their communities better.

(One of the four trends):

A renewed emphasis on conservation

Some of the top Arkansas heroes of the 20th century were people who organized efforts to preserve our state's beauty and natural resources; people such as Dr. Neil Compton of Bentonville, the founder of the Ozark Society who led the fight to prevent a dam on the Buffalo River, and Dr. Rex Hancock of Stuttgart, who led the battle to prevent channelization of the Cache River.

Public concern about commercial hog-growing operations in the Buffalo River watershed appears to have ignited a new era of environmental activism in Arkansas, and that's a good thing. Arkansas has become a Republican state politically. Let's hope the new breed of Republican will be in the mode of the late Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller and the late U.S. Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt when it comes to conservation. We should expect nothing less in a place that bills itself the Natural State.