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Will Ozark Land Purchase Protect Horse Creek Tract?ST. LOUIS, Missouri, December 2, 2008 (ENS) - Rare and vulnerable to extinction, bright blue migratory songbirds can be seen flying through the trees on an 80 acre piece of land in the watershed of the Current River, one of North America’s most biologically diverse streams. The Missouri parcel links together federal and state protected lands and provides breeding habitat for the cerulean warblers, Dendroica cerulea, whose population is declining throughout its range in both North and South America. The Nature Conservancy has collaborated with the state of Missouri, the American Bird Conservancy and the Missouri Conservation Heritage Foundation to protect the privately owned 80 acres in Shannon County by purchasing them to place in public ownership. After negotiating successfully with the sellers, the Conservancy will sell the property to Missouri Department of Conservation for addition to the Angeline Conservation Area management unit. The MDC identified the partners and assembled a collaboration to fund the acquisition of what is known as the Horse Creek tract. The Conservancy was able to quickly buy the land in a timely manner. Horse Creek, a perennial stream, runs across the property and empties into the Jacks Fork River about half a mile downstream from the property. The property and Horse Creek are in the Current River Critical Watershed Buffer Area. In addition, 37 acres of the tract are in riparian flood plain and have been identified as cerulean warbler breeding habitat. The American Bird Conservancy committed $35,000 to the purchase price of the tract because it is in an area of the Ozarks where there are high densities of cerulean warblers in the floodplain forests of the Jack’s Fork and Current River. "While the Horse Creek tract was cleared a few decades ago, it is transitioning back into a mature bottomland forest with characteristics that cerulean warblers prefer - well-developed canopy layers and canopy gaps where tall trees, like sycamores or cottonwoods, emerge above the tops of other trees," said Jane Fitzgerald with the American Bird Conservancy. Fitzgerald says the purchase will prevent the land from being cleared, which increases brown-headed cowbirds, a brood parasite with devastating effects on the cerulean warbler population, which has declined by 70 percent since the mid-1960s. The Missouri Conservation Heritage Foundation committed $55,500 through the Stream Stewardship Trust Fund. "This property was important for us because it closed a three-sided in-holding on public land, contained a high-quality aquatic resource that was vulnerable to adverse private development, and occurs in a Conservation Opportunity Area as identified by the Missouri Department of Conservation and its partner," said Rick Thom, executive director of the Missouri Conservation Heritage Foundation. In Missouri, the Nature Conservancy has designated the Ozarks and the Current River watershed as a high priority area for conservation. The Current River shelters the best known populations of 25 globally significant species. The cerulean warbler suffers from habitat loss and degradation in both its summer and winter range, says the National Audubon Society. Ceruleans have shown one of the steepest declines of any warbler species, showing a decline of 4.5 percent per year from 1966-2001 according to the Breeding Bird Survey, a cooperative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey's Patuxent Wildlife Research Center and the Canadian Wildlife Service's National Wildlife Research Centre to monitor the status and trends of North American bird populations. The remaining population of cerulean warblers breeds in the northeastern and central parts of the United States as far north as southern Ontario, as far south as Arkansas, as far east as the Atlantic Coast, and as far west as Iowa. Historically, cerulean warblers were especially abundant in the old-growth bottomland forests of the Mississippi Alluvial Valley, but these forests no longer exist. The species winters in the broad-leaved, evergreen forests and woodlands at middle to lower elevations on the eastern and western slopes of the Andes and montane forests of northern South America. But their winter habitat is being destroyed for the production of coffee beans and coca as the demand for coffee and illegal cocaine-based drugs grows. The main threat to the existence of the cerulean warbler is from just such habitat degradation and forest fragmentation as the human population increases and land uses change, which is the reason the purchase of Missouri's 80 acre Horse Creek tract is so important to their survival.
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hopefully MDC doen't clearcut it
Thanks for posting this. MDC has logged, and clearcut, a bunch at Angeline CA (in fact, I think there may be some pictures posted on the website from a trip I took that way last spring). I hope they don't do the same for this new tract. It reminds me of how the Nature Conservancy aquired the lands of Sunklands and gave it to the state for MDC to manage. As I understand it, it was one of the largest, unfragmented and unroaded forests in the Missouri Ozarks. Now it's roaded patchwork of clearcuts. But of course they'd call that good forest management.
MDC gets money from a sales tax, but gets to fatten their budget by selling the public's forests. It's a bad incentive to industrial foresters wearing a "conservation" badge.
Adjacent fragmentation will actually be detrimental to the warbl
The Cerulean warblers, like all NTMSB's need large blocks of old growth (80 acres is a "postage stamp" size) in order to successfully nest. The real question is whether warbler conservation will be MDC's priority or are they merely paying "lip service" to it. It's been our experience that MDC is more concerned in keeping the money rolling in and not in the conservation of species, meaning logging on their lands is a larger priority.
Charles Phillips
Boonville, MO
email: ozark-wild@att.net
MDC vs the Warblers
I totally agree with Jim and Charles. This 80 acre "postage stamp" is very near Eminence and along the river it is old growth, but for the last two years MDC has been opening up the Angeline so that it can "resort to its savannah past". Two years ago I wrote a letter to the Eminence paper and got a good response fromthe locals opposing MDC clearcuts...even visible from the river and from a scenic overlook. Their director, Hoskins, came down to get a detailed look along with his sawdust head state forester, Linda Allen. She apparently offered to resign during that visit 3 times. Some local pressure brought them down. I was blamed by some MDC employees for being to harsh on MDC. It was clear they do not like criticism of any kind. They have a culture of sawdustism and savannah redos. They give mild lip service to Pioneer Forest, which has restores its land to old growth status while continuing to harvest. We need statewide pressure for Hoskins to resign and we need to pressure the new governor to appoint real conservation-minded commissioners. We also need to pressure the legislature to recind the 1/8 cent sales tax and give it five year reauthorization so they can be held accountable. MDC is currently claiming they are broke so they are raising all hunting and fishing fees. They are such snake oil salesmen! We need to gather statewide support to whip them back into reason and away from the Missouri Forest Products Association. Remember, they are the bastards who brought the chip mills!
No Good Deed Shall Go Unpunished
I am the MDC wildlife biologist who initiated the 80-acre Horse Creek acquisition with partners from the American Bird Conservancy, The Nature Conservancy, and The Stream Stewardship Trust Fund. This 80 acre "postage stamp" as you men call it, filled a 3-sided inholding between several thousand contiguous acres of MDC public land and NPS public land.
This land had been listed and posted for sale by an out-of-town realtor who did not find a buyer. We discovered that the listing had expired and the owner planned to relist the property as sixteen 5-acre parcels. Several conservation partners then worked together to save this critical cerulean warbler habitat from certain fragmentation.
In addition to having excellent cerulean habitat, this property has 3 springs and half a mile of a beautiful crystal-clean stream.
Growing along this stream I found over 100 Tall larkspur (Delphinium exaltatum). This beautiful wildflower is listed as imperiled in Missouri and "vulnerable" nationally. Living in this stream is a tremendous number and diversity of fish, many only found in the Missouri Ozarks.
I will be leaving MDC to go to work for NPS in 2 weeks. I know John Hoskins and Lisa Allen personally, and I know them to be true conservationists of all natural resources. If they were unfit to lead I would say so without fear of repercussions. They are great people who work extremely hard to be good stewards of the lands I cherish.
They do not consider themselves (or MDC) infallible. I have personally seen them take responsiblility for mistakes that were not theirs, and then implement corrective action to ensure we in MDC do not repeat our mistakes.
I am grateful that you men, and many other citizens, expect accountability for your tax dollars and your public lands. If you ever have the good fortune to learn firsthand what motivates John and Lisa to work countless extra hours at their jobs, you will find it is good resource stewardship.
Naturally, Dan Drees
Good conservationist are only as good as their agency!
Dan- Thanks for your posting! it's good to hear that somebody at MDC is committed to conservation. Unfortunately, too many times over the last 15 years, MDC has sided with the resource extraction industries and so we have had bizarre proposals to clearcut and mine on OUR lands. MDC is also responsible for inviting the timber industry to build a high capacity chip mill near Poplar Bluff. While I appreciate the committment of some individuals at MDC, personally the agency has destroyed the public's trust by their behavior.
Missourians pay a conservation tax every time we make a purchase. Until the agency reforms itself and fires the agents for the extraction industry in their hierarchy, I would advocate against the renewal of that tax when it comes up for renewal and transfer all lands to DNR's parks department. While this might mean some good people may lose their jobs, it would apply public pressure on MDC.
Again Dan, thanks for your posting. I hope that John Hoskins and Lisa Allen will be truly commited to Cerulean warbler conservation.
Charles Phillips
Boonville, MO
email: ozark-wild@att.net
Thanks for the first-hand account
Dan, thank you for taking the time to share your first-hand knowledge of the land there and the process that led to protecting it. Obviously, some of us out here are a bit jaded by some of the choices, particularly the scale of logging on some of our Conservation Areas, made by MDC. This, of course, does not mean that everyone is so bad. Obviously you care a great deal about the land. Thank you for your stewardship.
Conservation si, self -serving bureaucrats no!
“The evil that men do lives on, the good is oft interred with their bones”
-William Shakespeare from Julius Caesar
In 1995, MDC brought high capacity chip mills to Missouri. After a Governor’s Commission to look into the extensive damage being done to the forests here in Southern Missouri and lots of bad publicity, MDC backed off some of its zealotry for the resulting rape was anything but conservation. A forest industry-infiltrated commission, secret memos and directives caused this dog pile to manifest itself here.
The next year the Conservation Commission met secretly to allow the Doe Run Company to explore for lead on 80,000 acres the Commission had just purchased from the Nature Conservancy. Environmental groups found out at a regular Commission Meeting they had already made the decision in a meeting excluding the public earlier. Sierra Club and the Missouri Coalition for the Environment sued them for breaking the Missouri Open Records and Meetings Act and for going beyond their foundation mission of managing “fish, forest and wildlife". Minerals were in the jurisdiction of the MDNR, not MDC.
While the current MDNR can send it’s politically captive toadies to the likes of Roaring River State Park to categorically lie to the public that “there is no karst in that part of Missouri”, the MDC representatives at that meeting told us that they were told by their bosses not to speak up at that meeting, which was called concerning a 65, 000 bird chicken CAFO being placed less than a mile from the park entrance. This is the MDC response after MDC spent many millions of the public’s monies on a super duper fish hatchery nearby. So much for MDC being free of politics and giving a crap about clean water.
I know many employees at MDC who do good work and many past employees who have done good work. Many of the current employees often whisper to me that they cannot criticize their upper echelon or the commissioners for fear of losing their jobs. Some of the past employees even dare to support a sunset of the 1/8 cent sales tax to bring some accountability, reduce waste and some needed humility to an agency whose income is the envy of resource agencies all over the country. They waited, however, until they couldn’t be fired. If one peruses MDC glossy rag, Missouri Conservationist or their website, there is no room or public comment or criticism. An elite arrogance is what is projected and I believe this damages decision-making at the agency. There needs to be room in this equation for public input.
In recent years MDC has reduced its support of the Missouri Stream Team Program just as it has boosted its support of its money losing forestry division. The unspoken message here is that MDC could care less about clean water. It continues to ignore private forestry initiative such as the well-established Pioneer Forest and the more recent Value Missouri, who brought FSC certified tree harvesting to Missouri
MDC has most recently stepped on a big dog turd. The great and wonderful powers of MDC Oz have decided they do not have enough money. They are raising hunting and fishing fees and tightening the “free” hunts on your own farmland. The hunters and fisherman are furious. Maybe a few scattered enviros won’t affect MDC’s behavior but I can assure you that the vast cadre of hunting and fishing people in this state is waking up to MDC’s lack of accountability, humility (many accounts of conservation agents acting like Gestapo thugs toward the public), willingness to listen to the public’s concerns and the ability to be frugal with the public’s money. Change may come.
As much as I thank and admire MDC people like Dan doing what they are supposed to, all too often the MDC leadership, including the Commissioners, side with the corporations and political despots who look at natural resources only in monetary terms. Some form of accountability is coming to the managers of the people’s resources.