"Pioneer Forest, at some 150,000 acres Missouri's largest private landholding, has been a lodestar of sustainability during more than half a century of dramatic oscillation in the goals and techniques of forest management nationwide. Initially intended by its owner, Leo Drey, to demonstrate the potential for developing a viable natural resource-based economy in the Missouri Ozarks, the forest through Drey's remarkably consistent vision and well documented management by single-tree selection came over time to represent a workable alternative to even-aged management regimes being promulgated on federal and state forests as well as a model of sustainability for other private forest holdings."

Flader, S.F. 2004.  Missouri's Pioneer in Sustainable Forestry. Forest History Today Spring/Fall (2004): 2-15.                

Susan Flader authors soon to be published article on the history of leo drey's work in Missouri and of pioneer forest

(Saint Louis, Mo, October 2005). Dr. Susan Flader, Vice President of the L-A-D Foundation and Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Columbia has completed a manuscript which is to be published in Forest History Today. The article, entitled 'Missouri's Pioneer in Sustainable Forestry', although dated as the Fall/Spring 2004 issue, is now part of their most recent publication.

Flader begins her review in the earliest days, in 1951, when Leo began assembling Pioneer Forest. Notable early contributions were from Leo's first foresters, Ed Woods and Charlie Kirk, as well as nationally-recognized Yale forester, H.H. Chapman. In 1955 Leo completed his largest single purchase, nearly 90,000 acres, from National Distiller's Products Corporation, still ranking as the largest single acquisition for conservation purposes in Missouri history.

Susan also recounts the steps leading to establishing Missouri's natural area, Current River Natural Area, as part of the Society of American Foresters then newly-emerging nationwide effort, and establishment of Pioneer's Continuous Forest Inventory.

Those early years quickly gave way to the mid- to late-1960's where emphasis on even-aged forest management not only swept through the country but Missouri as well, changing the more traditional way in which most managed forests were cared for. With clear-cutting came Pioneer's nearly two-decades long struggle to adhere to Pioneer Forest's more widely-tested selection cutting which Leo had committed to, all the while the professional forestry community began developing and using the techniques of even-aged forest management.

By the 1990's the Pioneer system of forest management received much more attention, from the conservation community, but also from those interested in the broader view of forestry. Investigations of Pioneer data, extending back to 1952, along with a host of other scientific studies began to vindicate the consistent and long-term efforts of Pioneer Forest. As Dr. Ed Lowenstein, presently of Auburn University, concluded from his dissertation work on Pioneer during the 1990's and his more recent observations as part of Pioneer's 50-year anniversary in 2001, 'Every argument that has been leveled against Pioneer Forest seems to be invalid from the data we have collected.'

With a host of positive results emerging from a variety of scientific investigations Pioneer's system of management is demonstrating that good forestry also yields 'an array of ecological, social and esthetic values increasingly appreciated by many.'

You can read or download the pdf file which contains the full article as it appears in Forest History Today.



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