OUTDOOR CORNER: MISSOURI NURTURES ITS FORESTS AFTER MANY YEARS OF ABUSE

(Note: Logging was a booming industry in the Ozarks after the Civil War, fueling an economy built around an abundant resource. Missouri lumber production peaked in 1899. When the forests began to dwindle in the early 1900s, hardships followed on a barren landscape.)

(Part 2)

ROAD TO RECOVERY

By 1920 the Missouri forests that no one thought would run out, did. Mills closed. Hard times followed.

J.B. White, who made a fortune logging the Ozarks, had a twinge of conscience. In 1910 as the Grandin Mill was shutting down, he invited the Chief of U.S. Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, to tour the Missouri Ozarks. White urged Pinchot to set up a national forest in Missouri.

It was not until 1928 that Missouri's depleted forests received any official attention. That year, the Missouri General Assembly authorized a Department of Forestry under the Board of Agriculture. The Board appointed Frederick Dunlap as state forester and hired Paul Dunn as a district forester. Dunn moved to Ellington, where his primary job was fire prevention. He once reported that at least three-fourths of the land outside the state parks burned off twice each year.

Dunn drove around his district in a Model T, hauling a trailer with a movie projector and generator. He had one film, "Trees of Righteousness", apparently made by the U.S. Forest Service in Arkansas. Dunn wore out five prints of it showing it to every school district in Reynolds and adjoining counties.

In 1931, the governor vetoed the forestry appropriation and abolished the Forestry Department. State Forester Dunlap concluded that it was impossible to stop forest fires in the Ozarks.

By the mid-1930's, Missouri's forest and wildlife resources were at an all-time low. The forests were burned and abused. Gravel, eroded from the hillsides, choked the once-clear streams.

An estimated 2,000 deer remained in the entire state, and turkeys declined to a few thousand birds in scattered flocks. In 1929, the Missouri National Forest Association successfully lobbied the Legislature to permit the federal government to purchase land in Missouri for a national forest.

Eight purchase units were set up in 1934-35, and the national forests became a reality. Eventually 1.5 million acres of cut-over forest land was acquired -- "the land that nobody else wanted."

Conservation efforts were also underway on the state level. Voters approved the constitutional amendment creating the Conservation Commission in 1936. This new agency included a forestry division -- an innovative idea at a time when most other fish and wildlife agencies were separate from forestry departments. The early Missouri conservationists recognized that a healthy forest resource was essential to healthy fish and wildlife populations.

The Conservation Commission hired former Forest Service employee George O. White as state forester in 1938. Fire control was his first big job.

Borrowing an idea from Paul Dunn, the "Showboat" was put into operation to educate the rural folks not to burn. This was a truck with a generator, picture screen and projector, and operator. It took forestry movies into the Ozark hills where there was no electricity. The pictures were shown outdoors, in crossroad stores, at country churches and schools. The "Showboat" brought movies to people who had never seen one in their lives. This mobile entertainment operated for 12 years, continuing even through World War II.

A remark made by State Forester White during 1940 pointed up the forest fire problem quite succinctly. A U.S. Forest Service inspector visited Missouri to see if the federal funds were being spent properly. During a tour of the protection districts the inspector remarked that more fire lookout towers were needed. Mr. White answered, "We are not able to fight all the fires that our towers are now reporting."

Gradually, fire prevention programs began to pay off. Once fires were reduced, efforts could be turned to managing the forest. Foresters planted seedlings, harvested trees damaged by fire, and removed undesirable trees.

From the earliest days concerned people realized private lands were the key. In 1938 conservation agents and field service agents worked with private landowners to improve fish and wildlife habitat.

In 1946 farm foresters began the work of assisting private forest landowners in Cape Girardeau, Bollinger and Perry counties. By 1950, farm foresters were at work in the Ozark counties.

Tremendous progress in Missouri's forest management has been made in the last half-century. The once-impossible task of fire control in the Ozarks is a reality. Today less than one-tenth of one percent of Missouri burns each year. Deer and turkey are found in record numbers.

Restoration programs have reintroduced ruffed grouse and river otters. And once again, Missouri is a leader in wood products.

Conservation-wise use has made all this possible. So remarkable has been this recovery that some areas are now called "wilderness." Older foresters just smile and think back to all the years of fire fighting and management that helped create that "wilderness."

Today, 14 million acres, or 31% of Missouri, is in forest cover. Of that amount, 13.4 million acres is classified as commercial forest land. Over 600,000 acres is non-commercial forest land or reserved forest land. These last two categories represent areas which cannot produce commercial timber crops because of poor growing conditions or because they are administratively reserved from timber production, as is the case with state parks and wilderness areas.

Joe Garvey is district forester for Missouri Department of Conservation.