Little Piney- Barbed Wire Fence

[Al Agnew]

They might even think they are good stewards of the land, but their priorities are probably going to be producing beef, and the river is unimportant to that mindset except as a water supply for the cows. Cows don't care if the banks are eroded and the water is muddy and their poop is overfertilizing it. And unless the landowner cares as much or more about fishing "his" stream as he does profiting from his cattle, he won't either. Being a stream landowner doesn't automatically make you a stream despoiler or a selfish pinhead that wants it all to himself...but it doesn't automatically make you a good stream steward, either.

[oneshot]

Me and my wife just had a conversation about this. Several things have been stopped in the Woods and Streams of the Ozarks because of Endangered Species.

Me being one in the past to burn the woods every Spring and take Gravel. Always figured what I did was why Endangered Species were there considering I wasn't doing anymore than so many before me had been doing the same before me for the last hundreds of years. Always felt burning produced more undergrowth for animals and I will admit for Cattle and Goats but also Deer and Turkeys. Taking Gravel produced Holes for swimming and Fishing..

Now see timber not burnt being taken over by Cedars and Maples, thick Leaf Litter, not as much undergrowth. Then Gravel choking the streams much less water to be floated or fished.

Now as far as fencing a Floatable Stream, I've tried it, found it to be more of a pain to try and do it, at least once a year I was moving Stock out of the area because I knew my Fence was going to be washed out and I would have to put it back up. After awhile it became not much of a Fence.

Been shot at by people owning both sides of a stream.

So have been on both sides of the coin. MDC, DNR and whomever if there is Laws, let there be no Grey Area and enforce the Laws either way they fall.

oneshot

[Al Agnew]

Oneshot, burning is fine as long as it's done right. You see the state park people burning a lot to clear undergrowth and encourage grass growth, trying to put things back to the way they were before the Ozarks was logged off. I have to question how effective it really is for recreating savanhah habitat, because they aren't doing the other thing that would make savannahs...clearing about 2/3rds of the timber. The original Ozark woodlands were basically large trees spread far apart, with grass growing beneath them. Now we have small trees crowded close together and little grass.

Burning never did much for getting rid of ticks and chiggers, and it was done far too much in the old days, resulting in so much bare ground that there was tremendous erosion, which is where the original gravel came from that choked the streams.

As for gravel dredging, you're just plain wrong there. No gravel operation ever removed enough gravel to make a difference in the bed load of the streams, and the reason you see more gravel choked streams now is because of more land clearing and overgrazing in the watershed, developments that just happened to coincide with less gravel mining. And gravel mining is bad, bad, bad for the streams in many ways, especially as it was so often done in the past where the gravel was dredged from the main channel of the rivers. Now, most is done by skimming the gravel bars, and if done responsibly, by leaving a buffer zone between the dug out area and the normal river channel, is not TOO bad, although I can show you places where this bed skimming resulted in the pools below being filled in with the next flood.

And you're wrong that "endangered species" stopped the burning and gravel mining. Both are still done, though not as destructively as they once were, and as far as I know there is no rule in place that precludes either because of an endangered species. The rules that are in place are designed to make the practices less harmful, although the lack of enforcement by the DNR makes the whole thing problematical yet.

[Kayser]

Thank you for taking the time to write that up, Al.