The director of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources says there are fewer hunters, but more gun owners in Iowa these days. 1975 seems to be the high-water mark for hunting in Iowa. The state issued more than 416-thousand hunting and fishing licenses that year. This past year, the state issued nearly 60 percent fewer licenses than it did four decades ago. D-N-R director Chuck Gipp says his agency’s operations are financed, in part, by those license fees. “With revenue being flat or going down like that, it’s going to be a challenge,” Gipp says.

According to a study by researchers at Columbia and Boston Universities, nearly 34 percent of adult Iowans own a gun. “People are physically using shooting as a sport or recreational activity, so they’re buying the weapons and there’s a great increase in the number of weapons that are out there,” Gipp says. “So our shooting sports and our ranges are critically important so they have a place to go and discharge that weapon.” The state owns and manages 10 shooting ranges. The rest are private or run by a county conservation board. In 2012, Gipp’s agency started awarding state grants for the development and improvement of shooting ranges around the state.

“The sale of weapons have increased. It’s incredibly important that if you’re going to use a weapon properly that you have the education and the opportunity to shoot it,” Gipp says. “Access to private lands for shooting, like when I was a kid you’d just grab a few bottles out of the county and city dump and you’d take them out to the old quarry and you’d shoot those. You can’t do that anymore and so shooting ranges are incredibly used.”

Earlier this year, more than 22-hundred Iowa kids participated in the annual “Scholastic Clay Target Program Trap Championship.” It was held near Cedar Falls, at the Iowa State Trapshooting Association Homegrounds. “The various shooting stands that they have, it’s about a mile long,” Gipp says. “And that’s not big enough, now, for some of the trap shoots that we have for the high school teams.”

The “Hunger Games” movies have spurred interest in another shooting sport — archery, but Gipp says finding shooting ranges for archers is difficult.

(Radio Iowa)

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:39 a.m. CST

VIENNA, Ill. (AP) — Authorities in southern Illinois have identified the four people who died after a single-engine plane crashed in a wooded area on New Year’s Eve. Johnson County Coroner David Rockwell says 34-year-old Curt Terpstra, 35-year-old Jordan Linder, 26-year-old Jasmine Linder and 37-year-old Krista Green died in Saturday night’s crash. All four were from eastern Iowa.

NEWTON, Iowa (AP) — A former Iowa police officer has been fined and ordered to complete a treatment program for drunk driving and weapons charges. Former Newton officer Dustin Hamell received the sentence last week in connection with an Aug. 30 traffic stop on Interstate 80 outside of Des Moines. Authorities said that his blood tested at nearly three times the legal alcohol limit, and that he had a loaded handgun and unopened cans of beer in his truck.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A University of Iowa benefactor has donated $5 million toward the renovation of Kinnick Stadium’s north end. The university announced Sunday, during Outback Bowl festivities in Tampa, Florida, that Ted and Deb Pacha had made a contribution to the $90 million project. The project plans include a second deck for seating and expanded concourses. The project is expected to be finished before the 2019 season.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A charity controlled by Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad has missed a deadline for disclosing the names of donors who paid for his 2015 inaugural celebration, keeping them secret even as he prepares to become the U.S. ambassador to China. Tax experts say the lack of disclosure potentially subjects the group to IRS penalties of $100 per day. It means the public doesn’t know the identities of those who wrote checks totaling $1 million to fund Branstad’s inauguration and namesake college scholarships.

A central Iowa program that primarily helps men released from prison be good parents is entering its 11th year. Dave Schwartz, the C-E-O of the Y-M-C-A of Greater Des Moines, says the men who ENTERED his organization’s fatherhood program in 2011 and 2012 were paying, on average, about 36 percent of their monthly child support obligations. “The year after our program, that number was 68 percent,” he says, “and even four years later they’re still paying 65 percent, which is still above the national average.”

That is FAR above the national average. The latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates men who owed child support in 2013 were paying about 40 percent of what they owed. About 10-thousand children in Iowa today are getting NONE of the child support their parent is supposed to pay. Schwartz says the Greater Des Moines Y’s program runs 12 weeks and he’s hoping to expand the program’s reach. “We do that in two ways: expand to another community and also provide statewide facilitator training,” he says.

For the past three years, the state of Iowa has provided money to finance this fatherhood program. Schwartz is asking lawmakers to boost the state funding by 20-thousand dollars for next year. According to the Y’s website, many of the Des Moines-area fathers who go through the program have been able to regain partial or full custody of their children. Organizers say the Fatherhood Outreach program aims to teach what is means to be a father and the important role a father plays within a family.

(Radio Iowa)

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said today (Monday), 18-year old Wyatt Dean Baldwin, of Villisca, was arrested at around 3:15-p.m. (Monday) for Operating a motor vehicle without the owner’s consent, and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia. Baldwin was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on $2,000 bond.

An Iowa State University researcher studying the impact of wind turbines on Iowa crops hopes to win funding to expand on the initial work he has done. Gene Takle has already found some differences in conditions such as temperature and humidity in fields near turbines. That funding is running out in the next year. “We have written one proposal to the National Science Foundation for additional funding and we’re in the process right now of writing a proposal — if it were funded — would bring researchers from several institutions to focus on this problem,” Takle says.

Takle, a distinguished professor of agronomy and geological and atmospheric sciences, says there are many other researchers who are interested in taking part. “Scientists from Purdue, from the University of Illinois, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, from the University of Oklahoma, the National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment — which is a U-S-D-A lab — is interested in coming and bringing instruments. And we also have interest from the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the University of Helsinki that are interested and want to participate in the analysis of any data that we get in,” according to Takle.

Takle says his research is different from what has been done by others. “There have been researchers who have looked at two aspects. They have looked at conditions upwind and downwind of winds farms, but they haven’t measured conditions inside a wind farm,” Takle says. Other researchers have examined satellite images of wind farms. “They’ve looked at Iowa and they’ve looked the landscape over Texas, where there is a lot of wind farms,” Takle explains, “and they see a consistent pattern that at night the satellite pictures show that there is a very slight warm spot associated with each of these wind farms.”

He says that warm spot is similar to heat islands seen on satellites near cities. Takle says there is more to learn more about why the heat island is created. “These researchers have not been down on the ground to say ‘well it’s because it was an irrigation region around this area or cattle were grazed there, or crops were managed differently of for some other reason other than the turbines creating it,'” Takle says. “So we are the first to measure inside a wind farm and concurrently outside a wind farm so we can actually measure the differences.”

Takle says all these other variables will make it harder to find answers to the causes of the impact on farm fields near the turbines.

(Radio Iowa)

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) – A Nebraska man accused of threatening to stab someone with a syringe that he said held HIV-tainted blood has pleaded guilty to a reduced Iowa robbery charge. Court records say 35-year-old Jeshua Divis, who lives in Omaha, pleaded guilty Thursday in a Council Bluffs courtroom and was sentenced to time served.

Divis had been convicted of robbery in March 2015. His conviction was overturned and he was granted a new trial after he challenged his conviction. He said some of the evidence against him should not have been allowed at trial and that his attorneys were ineffective.

Prosecutors say Divis told a woman at the Ameristar Casino in Council Bluffs in November 2014 that he’d inject her with the tainted blood if she didn’t hand over her money.

Officials with the Stuart Police Department say a joint investigation between Guthrie County Deputies, Panora Police Officers and Stuart Police Officers has resulted in several juveniles being charged with various crimes. As part of the investigation a search warrant was conducted Sunday night in the 300 block of North Division Street, in Stuart. During the search, officers and deputies recovered several types of illegal narcotics, including what is believed to be Cocaine and a substance commonly referred to as “Acid”. The names of the juveniles involved will not be released due to their age.

The Board of Supervisors in Adair and Cass Counties will hold their annual organizational meetings Tuesday morning (Jan 3rd), in Greenfield and Atlantic, respectively. The meeting in Atlantic begins at 8:30-a.m., while the Greenfield meeting gets underway at 9-a.m.

Both Boards will take care of Administrative duties that include electing a Board Chair and Vice-Chair for 2017, setting their meeting schedule, approving the appointments of Deputies and/or their assistants; Adopting a Master Matrix livestock Resolution for submission to the Iowa DNR that makes recommendations to approve or deny construction permit applications for livestock facilities, and much more.

In Adair County, a Public Hearing will be held at 9:30-a.m. Tuesday, on a Fiscal Year 2017 Budget Amendment, followed by a Resolution approving the amendment as written. Bob Kempf, with the Adair/Guthrie County Emergency Management Agency, will present a 28-E agreement and change in Tax Draw, to the Board. And, County Engineer Nick Kauffman will present for signature, a Resolution for Empowerment of the Engineering, as well as a Resolution Designating the County Engineer. Kauffman is also serving as Interim County Engineer in Union County.

More area and State news from KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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Members of the Atlantic and Griswold School District’s Boards of Education will meet Tuesday evening in Griswold Midde/High School Library. Available Board members from both schools will be meeting at 6-p.m. with southwest Iowa Representative Tom Moore and Senator Tom Shipley on legislative matters of importance to the districts and education in general.

The session is open for the public to attend. No action is expected, only discussion.