Missouri Coalition for the Environment

Current River- Ozark National Scenic Riverways

Friends of Ozark Riverways and MCE are petitioning the National Park Service (NPS) to improve their management of Missouri’s finest river, the Current River. There are two ways you can help.

Sign the Current River Petition Online! Visit the website www.CurrentRiverFriends.org. In the upper right of the homepage is the link to our petition. Signing up is the easiest way to help us this summer. Do it today, and then ask others to do the same. Our website is also the place to go for more information about our issue.

Help Collect Signatures the Old-Fashioned Way! If you prefer, we have attached an electronic file from which you can print the petition language and a signature sheet. Summer is the perfect opportunity to ask family, friends, and neighbors.

Nationally, American Rivers has been collecting signatures from those interested in the Current River. Our own Missouri effort is beginning to reach out across the state. We are asking each organization affiliated with Friends of Ozark Riverways to help us collect signatures.

Allied organizations are hard at work. Environment Missouri collected signatures at Earth Day and continues that effort as they visit neighborhoods in St. Louis talking about Current River. Sierra Club members in Kansas City have begun to distribute petitions to their leadership and collect signatures from their members. River rats in Springfield are working together to see just how many they can gather from southwest Missouri. Others also are working on gathering signatures in Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, West Plains, Farmington, and Cape Girardeau.

Later this year we will present these petitions to NPS officials and Missouri’s elected officials. These signatures, from hundreds of citizens, are our most powerful call to the NPS to improve its river and park management at Ozark National Scenic Riverways.

Return signature sheets with one or more signatures to: Friends of Ozark Riverways, P.O. Box 1022, Van Buren, MO 63965.

American Rivers, a national conservation organization, issued its annual “America’s Most Endangered Rivers” report May 17th, and for the first time in the report’s 26-year history, the Ozark National Scenic Riverways park has been named one of the top ten endangered rivers. The Ozark National Scenic Riverways encompasses 134-miles of the Current and Jacks Fork Rivers in southern Missouri and is managed for its recreational and scenic benefits by the National Park Service.

With the listing as one of America’s “Most Endangered Rivers” representatives from Missouri environmental, fishing, paddling, and conservation organizations put the National Park Service on notice that more is expected in managing the Current River for the future. Friends of Ozark Riverways is asking the public to stay engaged and informed as the new General Management Plan for the Riverways is drafted and submitted for public review later this year.

The Ozark National Scenic Riverways feature clear water flowing from abundant springs and provide some of the Midwest’s best river recreation to 1.3 million visitors each year. However, inadequate management has allowed unfettered vehicle access and excessive horse access to the river, which destroys vegetation, the wild, scenic qualities, and causes severe erosion and pollution. Unless the National Park Service gives the Riverways the protections afforded to the country’s other national parks, the area’s healthy, natural river experience will be lost.