The Nature Conservancy Purchases More Than 7,000 Acres of Forest Land in the Current River Watershed

ST. LOUIS, Missouri — December 4, 2007 — The Nature Conservancy recently purchased 7,053 acres of Ozark forest land in the upper Current River watershed in Texas County. As one of the largest private landholdings in the watershed, this property was identified by Conservancy scientists as a critical acquisition for the Conservancy’s conservation work in the Current River. This land purchase represents 7 percent of the Conservancy’s goal to conserve 100,000 acres in the Current River watershed.

This ambitious goal was recently announced in conjunction with the Conservancy’s largest private conservation campaign in Missouri, an $18 million Campaign for Conservation. The monies raised in the campaign will support land preservation and restoration in the Ozarks and in the Central tallgrass and Osage Plains prairies, floodplain restoration on the Mississippi and its tributaries, and global restoration and conservation in such places like the grasslands of Brazil and the pine savannas in Belize.

In the Current River watershed, the Conservancy uses a conservation buyer model: the Conservancy purchases land, protects it with a working forest conservation easement and then puts it back on the market with the easement allowing sustainable timber harvesting. This protects the land, water quality and aquatic and terrestrial life while supporting the economics of the community and private land ownership.

“Our goal is to benefit both the economy and ecology in the Ozarks and support private land ownership. Through conservation easements, which enforce best management practices, the land will be conserved effectively and sustainable harvested,” said Susan Heisel, state director of the Conservancy in Missouri.

Kurt Homeyer, Current River project manager for the Conservancy, sees this as a win-win for those in the community, the residents of Missouri who enjoy the recreation aspects of the Current River, the rare and endangered species living in the Current River watershed and the timber industry. “We have a window of opportunity to make a difference in this stunningly beautiful and biologically significant area. In 10 to 20 years, this opportunity will no longer exist.”

If current habitat destruction and clear cutting continue in the Ozarks at their present rate the watershed and the woodlands will be irreparably degraded within the next 10 to 20 years.

The Ozarks are an unglaciated landscape dating back 1.5 billion years. Once a tall volcanic mountain range, a billion years of erosion has worn the Ozarks down to the rounded knobs that most Americans associate with the popular vacation and outdoor recreation area. Nine hundred million years ago most of the surrounding area was covered in shallow seas. However, parts of the Ozarks have been continuously exposed for more than 225 million years, making them among the world’s oldest continuously inhabitable landscapes for plants and animals.

The Ozarks are home to 407 species targeted by the Conservancy and other agencies for conservation, with more than 160 species that are endemic, occurring nowhere else in the world. These Ozarks provide critical habitat for neotropical migratory birds and a number of rare fish species. Critical ecological threats to the Ozarks include: suppression of naturally occurring fires, altered water flows, loss of forest and woodlands, changes in water quality and unsustainable development.

Through the success of the conservation buyer program, supported by the Campaign for Conservation including a recent $2 million matching grant from Howard and Joyce Wood, the Conservancy can help sustain Missouri’s Ozark heritage for future generations.

Together with our members and conservation partners, The Nature Conservancy in Missouri has protected more than 138,000 acres of critical natural lands since 1956. For more information on The Nature Conservancy in Missouri, visit nature.org/missouri.

The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working to protect the most ecologically important lands and waters around the world for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific.