How The Natural World Vanishes...

[Al Agnew]

Interesting observations, Chief, and I think you're right on. Over on my side of the state, I don't see the stuff you noted as much. Less agriculture over here, except for pasturing cattle, so fewer problems with pesticides and herbicides. But the septic tank problem is probably just as bad. What I see is a lot more development, but the effects aren't obvious.

But perhaps Big River is the symbol of what's to come. Name an environmental ill affecting streams, and Big River is suffering from it. Start at the very upper end...Council Bluff Lake. The dam is on the main stem of Big River but very near the farthest headwaters. Water coming off the top of the lake through the dam makes the stream below warmer than what it once was in the summer. Go down a few miles and you pass the mouth of Cedar Creek. Cedar Creek and the river just below it was horribly damaged by gravel mining in the fairly recent past. In fact, the mining was un-permitted and illegal, but it went on for a number of years before it was finally stopped. It wrecked the last two miles of Cedar Creek and really messed up Big River for a mile downstream. In Cedar Creek the mining simply changed the creek from a normal pool and riffle stream to a shallow, straight channel, which is now grown up in brush and young trees and beginning to recover. But in Big River they dug out a huge, lake-like pool, that has remained, stagnant and warm and full of aquatic vegetation. The water leaving the pool is usually murky and warm, and the fishing in the next couple of miles has really gone downhill.

Cedar Creek itself suffers from overfertilization due to all the agriculture along it. It was once a great little wading stream, now it's choked with vegetation and is often murky.

You have about three miles of "natural" river channel below the gravel dredging, and then you reach an older gravel mining area. In this one they dug out the gravel down to bedrock, and for the next four miles the river still has a bedrock bottom and is quite shallow. Then you reach an even older gravel mining area which runs for another three or four miles, where the channel was altered considerably. But this stretch is in an advanced stage of recovery and is now back to decent habitat...except that several large cattle operations just upstream are messing up the river with all the over-fertilized run-off, and this section is horribly choked with aquatic weeds.

Just when the river begins to clean itself up, it enters the old lead mining area. The first mine complex it encounters has dumped a lot of mine tailings into the river just above the Leadwood Access, but not quite enough to totally mess up the river...it's still good habitat for another two miles, down to the worst mining area adjacent to Desloge. This one, which fills the whole inside of a five mile horseshoe bend, has dumped vast amounts of tailings into the river over the years. A mile below the end of that bend, the next mining area has dumped more vast amounts of tailings into Flat River Creek, which has poured them into the river. For the next ten miles the habitat is horrible, filled in badly with tailings.

This whole stretch has an even worse problem, though. It flows through the Old Lead Belt population center, with about 30,000 or so people living there and ever-expanding subdivisions. The sewage treatment plants are supposed to be within DNR regulations, but when the river gets low, a very nasty green-black algae grows on the bottom and everything underwater, and then loosens from the bottom and floats to the surface, forming stinking, slimy mats up to several inches thick. Theory is that there is something in the lead and heavy metal contamination from the old lead mine tailings that interacts with the algae to form this mess. But if there wasn't the over-fertilization from the treated sewage in the first place it wouldn't be a problem.

Of course, there is also the clearing and paving of the land in the area, which makes for other run-off and erosion problems. But the river begins to recover from some of this stuff (although the algae problem goes for a long way downstream) below St. Francois Park, only to enter the tiff (barite) mining district, which has its own tailings contamination running into the river. It doesn't get past that until below Washington State Park. From there down to the mouth of the river, there are no more really obvious problems, other than simple people pressure with thousands of houses and cabins along the river, some of them little more than trash heaps.

And then, of course, there is the spotted bass invasion, which has now greatly altered smallmouth populations over more than 80% of the fishable miles of the whole river. A couple of rock quarries that dump rock dust into the river. Cattle in the water. People digging up gravel bars for no apparent reason. ATV paths on a lot of the gravel bars and going across riffles. Tens of thousands of old tires dumped off bridges, now lining the channel.

I sometimes find it amazing that with all these ills, the river is still fishable (except when that algae gets too thick) and in some places still pretty decent fishing.

[Chief Grey Bear]

You are right, I should have stated that my observance was from this area. But I wouldn't be a bit surprized to hear that it is state wide to some degree.

You are right on about parking lots. And developement in general. Every square foot of earth that is covered is one less square foot that can absorb rain/snow melt and enter the aquifer. It is also one less square foot that produces grass that helps to keep the cool. It is one less square foot that provides a natural environment that begins the food chain of life.

And one other bit about parking lots and all paved streets. When it rains, all of that water enters the water shed without processing through a treatment facility. Every pollutant deposited onto the pavement such as oil, rubber, heavy metals and just about anything you can think of rushes right into the rivers and stream that we love to fish. Just think for a moment of the hundreds of millions of gallons of water enter after each rain. And each of those gallons has just cleansed all of those paved areas. And just think in the winter of all the salt and other chemicals that are washed into the waterways from the snow melt.

I think the Canaries in the mine are trying to tell us something. I just don't see how we can keep doing this to our waterways and not expect them stop producing the enjoyment we so love to enjoy.

[ness]

...and, all the chemicals that we put on the yard, or put down the drain. There's just so much going in that it's hard to know what all the effects are.

For a long time I partially wrote off the 'good old days' as selective memory from the old timers. But there have been such dramatic changes in my lifetime (and I seem to notice more and more all the time) that I'm not so quick to dismiss it these days.

I went pheasant/quail hunting on a very sweet property in northern MO a couple weeks ago. I saw a dozen or so turkeys, no quail and one pheasant. The 'old timer' with us had tons of stories about the huge numbers of birds there in the 70's, and he's not the kinda guy to exaggerate. Of course there wasn't a turkey in the whole county back then. Maybe not even a deer. Definitely no cougars, and they just had a confirmed sighting a couple counties south of there this week.

Everything's changing, and it seems like we're getting farther and farther behind in reversing the trends.

[Chief Grey Bear]

We will never reverse what is happening. If you voice concern you are bleeding heart, tree hugging liberal. And for some reason that is a bad name. I don't know why but, it is far more chic to be a capitalist conservative. And what do they want? Less Government. Because that means less regulation. And we all know what happens with less regulation. It is all about me. It is all about the dollar. The dollar is more powerful than Jesus.

[ness]

...looks up...drifts back with the current, watching...quick flip of the tail and he lets it go by.

[Chief Grey Bear]

That is probably the best thing to do. Otherwise we will end up taking this in a direction we probably don't wan to go.

[ness]

That is probably the best thing to do. Otherwise we will end up taking this in a direction we probably don't wan to go.

Good on you, Chief. It's been a good conversation.

[Gary Lange]

I was watching a little program about Branson on the Branson Channel and saw a clip about Float Fishing on the White River before the Dams. It was about Jim Owens White River Float Fishing Co. and they had a picture of a guy holding up a stringer with five Smallies on it. It said they only kept enough for a fish fry that night and the rest had to go back. They weren't large fish but nice ones.

[Al Agnew]

Yeah, we don't want to get into the conservative/liberal argument...let me just say that I'm a tree-hugging environmentalist and I'm proud of it. I have actually been known to hug trees (and, believe it or not, receive something from the contact).

[Trout Commander]

I have actually been known to hug trees (and, believe it or not, receive something from the contact).

There are several over the counter ointments available for the effects of such contact.

As someone previously posted in another thread, all outdoorsman should be tree huggers to a great extent.