by Dan Dees, Susan Flader, and Greg Iffrig
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Current River Natural Area is Missouri’s oldest natural area and our only known virgin old growth, white oak stand. It is in the center of what is thought to be the largest area dominated by white oak prior to European settlement. This was and still is Missouri’s Big Woods. The Society of American Foresters, in 1947, had begun a program to designate virgin forest types for various species as protected natural areas. Several people recommended this particular grove, among them The Nature Conservancy and Dr. Julian Steyermark. Negotiations began in 1953 between National Distillers, the owner at the time, and concluded in 1955 when the Society of American Foresters and Leo Drey, then the forest’s new owner, agreed to the designation. The agreement was recorded in the Shannon County courthouse in April of that year.
Some call them primordial oaks, they are certainly old. Dr. Richard Guyette, a dendrochronologist from the University of Missouri-Columbia, has aged white oak trees here at 300-400 years old. Among the many oak species at home in Missouri, white oak is the longest lived. Originally small, only 10 acres, now a much larger 255-acres surrounding the original site will be added to the natural area by the current day Missouri Natural Areas Committee. Here, too, are rare groves of these ancient oaks, many of which are larger, taller, and perhaps older than the monarchs in the original natural area. Most Missouri Natural Areas are islands of natural integrity within an ocean of intense landscape fragmentation. Current River Natural Area is nestled within the largest single piece of land in the state; no other unit of land under public or private ownership is larger. This important natural area, with its long history, is found in an area of more than 90 square miles. Most of this sizeable area is recognized as the Roger Pryor Pioneer Backcountry, part of the L-A-D Foundation’s Pioneer Forest.
Perhaps most telling is what is not here. This may be Missouri’s least threatened natural area. There are no signs of invasive exotic species, no utility corridors, paved roads, flight paths, or any of the effects of urbanization. Even the forests of Pioneer are the most conservatively managed of any in Missouri, the result of more than half-a-century of single-tree selection management. Here, there is high natural integrity amidst a large and primitive, forested landscape.
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On Saturday April 30 at 10:30 a.m. there will be a re-dedication of the original site along with a dedication of the 255-acre addition. The sizeable addition, commemorating the natural area’s 50th anniversary, will be done through the L-A-D Foundation. This is because on July 6 of 2004, Leo, one of Missouri’s truly remarkable conservation heroes, donated the most spectacular gift of real estate ever in the state of Missouri, and perhaps the nation, signing over nearly the entire acreage of Pioneer Forest to the L-A-D Foundation. The L-A-D Foundation now carries as one of its principal missions protecting this conservatively managed forest in perpetuity.
Come join us. Come celebrate. Come to walk through a very old forest in the heart of the Ozarks. For more information you may contact the Foundation’s office at 721 Olive, Room 1016, St. Louis, Missouri, or call (314) 621-0230.