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L-A-D Foundation and Pioneer Forest Celebrate
the 50th Anniversary of Current River Natural Area.
For
more information contact Greg F. Iffrig, 314.621.0230.
(Shannon County, Mo. April 30, 2005). On
this beautiful spring day the L-A-D Foundation celebrated the 50th
Anniversary of Missouri's first recognized Natural Area.
The Board of Directors of the L-A-D Foundation, Leo Drey,
staff of Pioneer Forest, representatives of the Missouri
Departments of Conservation and Natural Resources, along with many invited
friends, a group of about 45, celebrated the occasion by
re-dedicating the site and adding a 255-acre buffer to
the natural area.
(PHOTO: Dr. Richard
Smith, left, retired Professor of Forestry, University
of Missouri and retired board member L-A-D Foundation,
with Leo Drey, recounting their long history with
Current River Natural Area. Photo by Greg F. Iffrig.)
In the April 1952 issue of the
Journal of Forestry, the Society of American
Foresters' Committee on Natural Areas issued a request
for locations of virgin forest types. They were
beginning their search for specific undisturbed areas,
where known canopy-forming tree species, such as in
Missouri shortleaf pine, white oak, eastern red cedar,
or sugar maple were found. Such a collection of areas
was to serve as a comprehensive base of knowledge about
the natural developments within virgin forest
associations. The intention was to set them aside from
the forest management process, to not only protect them,
but to study their growth and change over time.
Leo Drey and Pioneer's first Forest
Managers, Ed Woods and Charlie Kirk, worked together
with the Society of American Foresters to initially
recognize a 10-acre area to be named Current River Natural Area.
Three years after their initial call for candidate
sites, the July 1955 issue of the Journal of Forestry
included a note highlighting the negotiations begun with
National Distillers Products Corporation of New York
City and completed between SAF and Leo Drey, then the
area's new owner. An indenture affecting the
approximately 10-acre area was was made on March 1, 1955
and then recorded in the County of Shannon, Missouri on
April 13, 1955.
At that time the area was widely known in the
conservation community as perhaps the best old-growth
white oak forest in the state. Students of Missouri's
natural area history recognize some of the very
earliest lists of potential sites. Among the areas found
on these lists, one from Dr. Julian Steyermark, another
from the ten newly-formed Missouri Chapter of the Nature
Conservancy, was this old growth white oak forest.
During those early years the Society
of American Foresters published a roster of areas around the
country which had been recognized by their program. The
first appeared in the Journal of Forestry in
1949, another in 1952. By 1960 there were 128 natural
areas in 34 states and Puerto Rico; Current River
Natural Area was the only Missouri area at that time.
In 1977, Current
River Natural Area was brought into the then fledgling
Missouri Natural Areas System, a jointly-managed project
of the Missouri Departments of Conservation and Natural
Resources.
As natural areas have grown in size to
offer better protection for their natural features, it
was suggested that Current River Natural Area, at 10
acres, was too small. Following several field
inspections of the land surrounding the small site,
it was quickly determined that in
fact there was a much larger area with equally
outstanding qualities. They proposed a 255-acre
expansion. The L-A-D Foundation, Pioneer Forest, and the
Missouri Natural Areas Committee agreed that an expanded
site was not only appropriate, but also offered a much
better sampling of the diverse natural character found
here.
As a summary statement, the nomination
for expansion includes the following: "The CRNA (Current
River Natural Area) is one of the few old-growth white
oak forests in the Missouri Natural Areas System. ...the
255-acre addition protects more of the landscape - the
natural integrity of the original natural area is
strengthened by the high natural integrity of the
addition. This nomination includes three additional
terrestrial natural communities... [as well as an] Ozark
Faunal Region headwater stream. The contribution of
these four natural communities to the overall
biodiversity within the natural area is very
significant."
Additional photos from the day's event
can be found on the front page of the Shannon County
Current Wave newspaper, Volume 131, No. 4, May 4,
2005.
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