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A New Sense of Stewardship From the ridgelands just south of Illinois, through Missouri to the mountains of south-central Oklahoma and Arkansas, the Interior Highlands are America's biological crossroads, where species from the arid West mingle with those of the humid Southeast. The red wolves may be gone, but black bears, mountain lions, and possibly even Florida panthers prowl the continent's principal hickory/oak forest. Beneath the wooded ridges lies a spectacular cavernous underworld whose subterranean streams sometimes force their way to the surface to shelter pale-black darters, Ouachita madtoms, and Kiamichi shiners. Although wealthy in natural diversity, the Interior Highlands have historically been economically poor. The region is changing rapidly now, but shortsighted development is impoverishing the ecosystem. Small logging operations and family farms are being replaced by corporate clearcutters and the largest concentration of poultry-producing facilities in the world. Where wild turkeys once scrabbled for acorns, hundreds of millions of fryers, roasters, and laying hens huddle in factory farms, brightly lit 24 hours a day to increase production. A major environmental problem in the region is disposing of more than a million tons of chicken manure a year. A sadly typical case is the big poultry plant that moved into Green Forest, Arkansas, bringing much-needed jobs but, more wastewater than the town's sewage plant could handle. Untreated waste flowed into local streams and, because of the area's fractured and porous limestone geology, the polluted water was quickly carried underground, contaminating wells for miles around. Cleanup costs are running in the millions of dollars. Such myopia also marks the U.S. Forest Service, which encourages clearcutting of the remaining hickory/oak woodlands. In the past quarter century, the Forest Service has replaced hardwood "weed trees" which monocultural pine plantations on a third of its loggable lands. The agency even wages chemical warfare against native species, bombarding tens of thousands of acres a year with herbicides designed to kill "noncommercial" species, thus drastically altering the native biota. As a result, many of the Highlands' plant and animal species are now threatened or endangered. The Highlands are also a victim of their own natural charms. A proliferation of vacation and retirement communities in the Ozarks jeopardizes the natural beauty that lured visitors in the first place. Development is outpacing basic environmental infrastructure, leaving much of the region without effective sewage-treatment or waste-disposal facilities; often such projects are opposed by retirees, who hope to keep taxes low. Sadly, the poverty of the region has led many to welcome development without question--even when it threatens their quality of life. Club activists in the Interior Highlands are trying to instill a new sense of environmental stewardship. They have been in the forefront of efforts to create the 97,000-acre Winding Stair Mountain National Recreation Area in Oklahoma; gain wilderness status for 90,000 acres in the Ouachita and Ozark national forests and 70,860 acres in the Mark Twain National Forest; bar construction of the Black Fox nuclear facility in Oklahoma; win wild-and-scenic status for the Eleven Point River in Missouri; and organize local citizens groups to resist the importation of hazardous waste into their communities. The list of what remains to be done is even longer. It includes restoring the hickory/oak forest; getting the wastes from oil-and-gas production recognized as hazardous; protecting streams, rivers, and aquifers from animal and mining wastes; and establishing municipal recycling programs. Each step is important, for each leads the Interior Highlands that much closer to real biological integrity. Contact: Photo courtesy Marty Matlock, Ph.D. Up to Top |
