Elk are one example. Once common in Missouri, elk disappeared from the state little more than 100 years after the first permanent European settlement was established in Missouri. MDC has led an effort to reintroduce elk. It would not work with small, isolated forests here and there. The famously long-ranging animals need room to wander in search of food and water. Keeping the watershed intact allows that to happen. Daniel Drees, a fire ecologist with the National Parks Service Ozark Highlands Park Group who is based in Van Buren, says the same is true for restoration. Conservation agencies working in the Current River watershed have learned that controlled burns at the landscape scale yield benefits that do not happen at a smaller scale. Many species of plants and animals have adapted over thousands of years to spread across large expanses, and that ability can be crucial to their survival. He gives the example of the collared lizards that live in glades in the watershed. The research of Washington University Professor, and former TNC Trustee, Alan Templeton found that landscape- scale controlled burns, covering whole mountains in the Ozarks, caused the kind of wide-ranging restoration that allowed collared lizards to spread across the region. Without it, they tended to isolate in small areas where they could be wiped out by greater roadrunners or other hazards. Researchers realized other species benefited in the same way. Large, unbroken stretches of habitat give them routes to escape to more hospitable conditions, whether that is a hideout from hungry birds or a hillside with a little more sunlight and water.
Such lessons can transfer far beyond the Ozarks to other imperiled landscapes, and they were made possible through collaboration among partners who have worked together for decades. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” Drees says. “Thus, two partners plus two partners doesn't equal four; it equals six for conservation success.” That is true of the partnerships as well as the land—bound together for all this time, the teamwork of many in an irreplaceable expanse of Ozarks is still outperforming what any single organization or island of forest could accomplish alone. TNC and MDC plan to continue to work together with their partners as those 5,600 acres of the former Chilton Creek Research and Demonstration Area move forward as part of Peck Ranch. More than 30 years after what began as a single land deal, those lessons are still multiplying. Photography Credits Front: Chilton Creek © Byron Jorjorian. Page 2: (from top) Prescribed burn at Chilton Creek Research and Demonstration Area © Route 3 Films; Pickerel frog © Rebecca Weaver. Page 3: (clockwise from left) Rose verbena © Rebecca Weaver; Tree canopy at Chilton Creek Research and Demonstration Area © Byron Jorjorian; Chilton Creek © Byron Jorjorian. Back: 2013 Survey of Chilton Creek Research and Demonstration Area © Lauren Merchant
The Nature Conservancy in Missouri P.O. Box 440400, St. Louis, MO 63144 nature.org/missouri
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