Bill Loving was looking for a quick-hit, computer-assisted, sports story this spring when he recalled reading stories analyzing hunting accidents.
Loving and reporter Dennis Anderson then came up with an even better twist: analyzing hunting and fishing violations. Anderson had heard the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources had been lax in its enforcement of violations in recent years.
Loving, computer-assisted reporting editor at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, set out to see what databases were available. To his delight, the Department of Natural Resources was helpful.
"Not only did they have good data going back to 1987, but they let us have it for free," Loving said. "They also agreed to let me download it via anonymous FTP, instead of dealing with tapes, etc."
Dissecting the data
The database contained a wealth of information, including:
Type of violation Amount of fine Date, time and county in which the violation occurred Badge number of the conservation officer The outdoor activity involved
From it, Loving was able to confirm Anderson's hunch.
DNR enforcement had in fact dropped, while ironically, outdoor activity was at an all-time high.
The story, which ran on the front page of the March 27 Star-Tribune, detailed a 28.2 percent drop in total DNR citations from 1991 to 1994.
In that period, hunting and fishing citations, including tickets for poaching and invalid licenses, dropped by an even steeper 32.6 percent.
"A second main finding was that enforcement of game laws was declining while enforcement of boat/snowmobile laws was rising," Loving explained.
"Given that the DNR had been working with a frozen budget and staffing level for decades, it looked as if they were making a conscious choice to re-direct resources away from hunting/fishing and toward motorized vehicles. Anderson's reporting confirmed that hypothesis."
Loving said he used Access 97 to establish the general trends.
He grouped hunting and fishing and motorized-vehicle violations together, grouped them again by year, and pasted his query results into Excel. He then used Excel to build a series of summary tables and charts highlighting his findings.
The database also gave Anderson a good idea of which officers to interview.
Unfortunately, Loving said most refused to talk on the record.
But those who spoke to Anderson gave him the rest of the story, detailing how low morale, budget shortfalls, and a rift between officers and the enforcement director played a hand in the citations plunge.
Few problems
The biggest challenge of the project was coordinating schedules with Anderson. This took months.
After the two found time to work together, Loving said the story took only a couple of weeks to complete.
There was only one other slight glitch in the data that Loving was able to work around. "They initially withheld the cases in which juveniles had been ticketed," he said. "But I later persuaded them to give me those records, too, but with the juveniles names deleted."
In all, Loving was pleased with the story, which he sees as a good example of CAR on the beat.
"We didn't uncover any major scandals, but it was an inside look at a public agency that most people don't know much about," Loving said. "And given the extreme importance of natural resources and outdoor recreation in Minnesota, it shed light on some real concerns about how the resources were being managed."
Loving recently compiled his own database using DNR violations to analyze hunting accidents, just in time for start of deer-hunting season.