Da Man. New Restrictions In The Onsr Being Mulled Over.

[Al Agnew]

I'm sure you're right about the cabins near Jam-up. Park boundary is about a third of a mile from Jam-up to the south, 2/3s of a mile to the north. You're also right that elevation change from river to ridgetop there is 300 feet. As for how wide the canyon is, just depends upon where you measure, but the drop-off from the gently rolling uplands into steep hollows leading to the river at Jam-up is nearly 4 miles from one side to the other. Hwy. 60 is 3 1/3 miles from Jam-up, which is about the closest it ever gets.

All that is a little beside the point, though, which is that you don't see those cabins from the river, you don't hear them unless somebody is actually mowing or chain-sawing, and otherwise as you float through you'd never know they were there, which is the case throughout the whole stretch...and there just aren't many streams in MO where you can say that...maybe the Eleven Point and some stretches of the Current. Neither of those streams have the combination of the narrow, closed in canyon and the spectacular bluffs of the Jacks Fork.

Having floated nearly all the Ozark streams, in my opinion the upper Jacks Fork is simply the most seemingly remote and the most beautiful of all the Missouri streams.

[jdmidwest]

Huh? Not the point. We're not talking about some super remote river in Saskatchewan. The Jacks and Current don't need more roads of any kind, paved or unpaved, and particularly the illegal kind made by ATVS and Billy-bob in his Jeep with muddin' tires.

Most of the rivers I access here in MO are off 2 track gravel roads, Castor, St Francois, Black, Little Black, etc. They are not overly developed and publicized like a NPS river.

[Guest]

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[ColdWaterFshr]

JD -- good for you, I like those places, too and for all the same reasons as you.

We're talking about the ONSR though and it sounds like you've already written them off as being "overly developed and publicized". While that may be true, we have to continue to do what we can to bring them back. Take a few minutes and log on to the "open for comment" link and share your frustration with these rivers being overly developed and publicized.

[SpoonDog]

Most of the rivers I access here in MO are off 2 track gravel roads, Castor, St Francois, Black, Little Black, etc. They are not overly developed and publicized like a NPS river.

It seems the NPS has exactly the same concerns you do about development and resource use- hence the proposed management changes.

[Al Agnew]

Jd, the difference between all those streams you mentioned and the riverways is that those roads are few and far between. Imagine what those rivers would be like if there was a public road going down to every gravel bar on them (or like it used to be on the upper Black, "roads" going all the way up and down the river bed). The problem isn't the character of the accesses, it's the number of them. It's also a function of the relative remoteness of them. On most other rivers, there are landowners living nearby that kinda police the area (some times too much, trying to run people off). But on the essentially unpopulated Riverways, policing is dependent upon the Park Service, who don't have the manpower to cover every little unauthorized access point. That would be absolutely no different if the state was managing it. They'd still have to close all those little roads to properly manage the resource.

Of course, we could just sell it all off back into private ownership. THAT would insure those little tracks are all closed, too. Unfortunately, there were very good reasons why it went into public ownership in the first place...to see what things would be like if it hadn't, you need go no farther than the private reaches around Eminence and Van Buren, and imagine the rest of the rivers looking something similar.

[mark hedger]

Well said, Al.

[jdmidwest]

ONSR is a frickin park, you expect to see people there. It's like going to Montauk expecting to experience a Limestone Spring Branch experience. I don't go there to get away, I go there for gatherings. I really never get excited about "getting away" when I plan a trip to the ONSR. Fishing sucks during the summer, crowds keep the fish skeered. Current River is better below the ONSR on the Current and less crowded with floaters. Upper Jacks is great too, most liveries will not launch boats up there because of low flows, but you can still do private floats. If I want getaway fishing trip, I will go 11PT or some other remote stream.

It is a public park that does not need more restrictions. Unless they want to return it to a wilderness, restrict all access, limit the amount of people on it, and tear out all of the improvements, then just leave it alone. If they do restrict it, then all of the boneheads you all are bitchin about will overflow into the nice streams.

Quit wasting my tax dollars pondering what to do.

[ColdWaterFshr]

ONSR is a frickin park, you expect to see people there. It's like going to Montauk expecting to experience a Limestone Spring Branch experience. I don't go there to get away, I go there for gatherings. I really never get excited about "getting away" when I plan a trip to the ONSR. Fishing sucks during the summer, crowds keep the fish skeered. Current River is better below the ONSR on the Current and less crowded with floaters. Upper Jacks is great too, most liveries will not launch boats up there because of low flows, but you can still do private floats. If I want getaway fishing trip, I will go 11PT or some other remote stream.

It is a public park that does not need more restrictions. Unless they want to return it to a wilderness, restrict all access, limit the amount of people on it, and tear out all of the improvements, then just leave it alone. If they do restrict it, then all of the boneheads you all are bitchin about will overflow into the nice streams.

Quit wasting my tax dollars pondering what to do.

Fine attitude, JD, good grief.

ONSR is a park but one that covers 134 hundred miles. Thats some kind've park, eh? Clearly you don't care too much for it, but I sure do and would like to see my kids and someday grandkids enjoy it in some small fraction of the way I have. And to "leave it alone" or not alter the current management plan, based on the degradation I've seen increase the last 10 years . . . . well, I think even the Park Service acknowledges that would not be a good idea.

[Al Agnew]

By the way, Jo Schaper with the River Hills Traveler got confirmation from the higher ups on the Riverways about the gravel bar camping, and it's as I said, it pertains only to gravel bars with established access roads leading to them. On those bars camping would be restricted to designated areas. On all other gravel bars, primitive camping from watercraft will still be allowed.

Also by the way...the Riverways are no more crowded than a bunch of other streams, like the middle Meramec, Courtois and Huzzah, Niangua, and upper Black. It's always a crap shoot whether or not you encounter a bunch of doofuses on summer weekdays, but on all those streams it's about equally likely. I've been on a number of floats on the Current between Round Spring and Logyard, and on the Jacks Fork from Eminence to Two Rivers, on summer weekdays when I did not encounter crowds and the fishing was good to excellent. And you can avoid the crowds of floaters by putting in a lot earlier in the morning than the 9 AM time when most of them get on the river. You can't, however, avoid the jetboat doofuses that way.

Point is, floaters can be obnoxious but they don't have the same kind of impact on the resource that the mostly local people that drive in on those unauthorized access tracks, and they are a whole lot easier to police. Almost none of them fish, so they don't impact the fishery resource, let alone poach. They don't drive ATVs up and down the river bed as the locals do on the upper Jacks Fork in the summer, either. They litter, and poop in the woods and pee in the river, though.