Citizens, Conservation Department wade into stream conservation challenges together

Landowners and county governments are getting help with problems ranging from soil erosion to bridge maintenance. Fish and wildlife are the big winners.

JEFFERSON CITY-Bill Ambrose didn't know what he was going to do about changes that were taking place on his land in northeastern Miller County. Gravel was choking Little Tavern Creek, where he once caught 16-inch smallmouth bass. The time, money and effort he had invested in stopping stream bank erosion seemed wasted.

The source of Ambrose's problem lay just downstream, where a gravel road crossed the creek. The concrete structure with metal culverts was acting as a dam, slowing the passage of floodwater. When the water slowed, it dumped sand and gravel on Ambrose's property, instead of flushing it on downstream as it had done for years.

Meanwhile, the Miller County Commission had troubles, too. Their stream crossing was a perennial problem. When the stream backed up behind the high concrete barrier, it flooded the road approach, blocking passage of commercial and passenger traffic.

Swirling currents periodically undermined the concrete structure, requiring costly and maddeningly temporary fixes. The latest fix had landed them in another kind of fix. It didn't comply with federal regulations on construction in and around streams. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers directed the county commission to fix the situation, but an acceptable solution was beyond the county's financial means.

The Missouri Department of Conservation came to the rescue with a solution that benefitted Ambrose, Miller County taxpayers and a third player, the endangered Niangua darter. Fisheries Management Biologist Greg Stoner pulled together a package of state and federal grants that allowed the county to install a bridge that lets raging flood flows pass unimpeded. Now, fertilizer delivery trucks and other commercial traffic can reach area farms in all kinds of weather.

Furthermore, the new, wide-span bridge will permit flood flows to flush sand and gravel out of Ambrose's fishing creek. Finally, thanks to Stoner's efforts, Niangua darters are free to swim upstream and reclaim historic habitat that previously was inaccessible because the concrete low-water crossing blocked their passage.

Eighty miles to the west, Kara Tvedt also is wearing a white hat these days. A Conservation Department fisheries management biologist like Stoner, Tvedt is responsible for helping landowners in five southwest Missouri counties that encompass much of the Pomme de Terre River watershed. When Paul McNealy came to the local Natural Resources Conservation Service for help with a stream erosion problem, they sent him to the Conservation Department.

"Mr. McNealy and a neighbor, Ron Hartman, had almost 1,000 feet of eroding steam bank," said Tvedt. "They were losing land at a high rate. Staff from the Conservation Department and the Natural Resources Conservation Service paid them a visit and helped develop a course of action to stop the erosion."

The solution was not cheap. It involved armoring the toe of the eroding stream bank with large rock, establishing stream-side vegetation and installing an alternative watering system so cattle fenced out of the stream-side land would have access to water. Planned grazing systems also were established to improve water quality of the runoff from the two farms.

Money from the Stream Stewardship Trust Fund administered by the Missouri Conservation Heritage Foundation was used to pay for rock, revegetation, fencing and alternative watering systems. Other cost-sharing programs paid for up to 90 percent of some practices. The landowners' contribution was to revegetate the stream corridor by planting redbud, ninebark, maple, sycamore and oak trees to help hold the stream bank in place. The landowners also contributed many hours of labor building fences.

Another farmer's land along the Maries River in Maries County was eroding along a 350-foot front and costing him precious acreage each time the river filled with storm water. Fisheries Management Biologist Rob Pulliam was able to put together a package of matching money that paid 90 percent of the cost of protecting the stream bank from further erosion.

The landowner agreed to plant trees along the eroding bank to anchor it in place so it will continue to resist stream bank erosion. Not only will this prevent the river from carving away more acreage from his farm, it will shade the stream, making it more habitable for fish.

This stretch of the Maries River benefitted from a unique combination of help from the Conservation Department and from the Maries County Soil and Water Conservation District's Special Area Land Treatment (SALT) project. SALT is intended to help landowners with stream-bank stabilization.

When a series of floods swept through the town of Piedmont in southeast Missouri, leaving buildings in the flood plain of McKenzie Creek devastated and the creek itself strewn with dangerous debris, the Conservation Department again came to the rescue. Stream Teams held a massive cleanup, removing tons of trash from the stream. Grants helped plant trees to restore the blighted flood plain to its former beauty. The agency also helped the city remove automobiles that had been used to stabilize a stream bank and replace them with rock rip-rap and stream-bank stabilization structures to ensure that bridges and remaining buildings would not be undermined by erosion.

These are just a few examples of the many ways the Conservation Department helps Missourians preserve one of their most treasured resources - streams.

"The value that Missourians place on their creeks and rivers is obvious in many ways," said Paul Calvert, the Conservation Department's stream services program supervisor. "One of the most striking examples is the Missouri Stream Team program. From its start in 1989, the program has chartered more than 3,000 citizen-led Stream Teams with more than 60,000 members. What else do you know that inspires that kind of response?"

The Conservation Department cosponsors Missouri Stream Team with the Conservation Federation of Missouri and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR). From the start, the program was designed to let each Stream Team define its mission and to empower them to pursue their goals.

The most popular Stream Team activity is stream clean-ups. Over the past seven years these efforts have grown increasingly ambitious. Stream cleaning teams now routinely haul tons of refuse from dozens of stretches of stream each year. The trash ranges from paper cups to abandoned automobiles. Some elite Stream Teams specialize in projects that would daunt a battalion of engineers, removing hundreds of sunken tires or whole cars from streams where they have been mired for years.

Other Stream Teams conduct water-quality monitoring, using skills and equipment provided by Conservation Department and DNR personnel. Some Stream Teams focus on public education.

In 2005, more than 45,000 Stream Team members spent 134,964 hours in activities ranging from adopting an access to zebra mussel monitoring. The value of their labor was calculated at $2,434,750.

In recent years the Stream Team program has entered a new phase where individual teams join together in watershed associations. This permits them to tackle problems on a scale far beyond what any team could accomplish alone.

"No government agency could ever have achieved these kinds of results alone," said Calvert. "Missouri Stream Teams are a conservation success story without parallel."

Far from resting on its laurels, the Conservation Department is stepping up stream conservation efforts. Its new strategic plan, titled "The Next Generation of Conservation," calls for doubling the number of Stream Teams and developing new methods to provide more affordable and effective erosion-control options for landowners. It also calls for managing stream corridors on all conservation areas to serve as models for landowners.

Whenever possible, the Conservation Department tries to leverage its own resources with those of other government and private partners. For example, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sometimes contributes matching funds for projects that benefit wildlife. The cases mentioned earlier involving the endangered Niangua darter are good examples. Fisheries Management Biologist Craig Fuller said Niangua darters were found in a stretch of Thomas Creek in Dallas County where they had never been seen before. The discovery came after the Conservation Department helped county officials replace a low-water bridge that effectively blocked upstream migration of the endangered fish. Changes that benefit endangered species - the most vulnerable fish - provide similar benefits to smallmouth bass and other game species.

The Conservation Reserve Program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture has several provisions designed to protect stream corridors. When combined with Conservation Department resources, these federal programs can make stream conservation affordable for Missouri landowners. In the Niangua River watershed alone, the Conservation Department has been able to install stream protection and enhancement projects on more than 24 miles of stream.

One of the Conservation Department's most familiar stream conservation efforts is Stash Your Trash. The program distributes free plastic- mesh trash bags to river recreationists, mostly through canoe-rental operations. This year the agency expects to distribute more than 300,000 Stash Your Trash bags, making it easy for floaters to keep an untold volume of trash out of streams.

"Caring for Missouri streams has always been an important part of the Conservation Department's mission," said Calvert. "There are lots of challenges in this work, but right now there are a lot of things to be excited about, too. With the help of citizens and other government agencies, we are making gains every day."

To learn more about stream conservation, visit www.missouriconservation.org.  For more information about Missouri Stream Teams, visit www.mdc.mo.gov/documents/fish/
streams/streamteam.pdf.

- Jim Low -