Forest Service updates from ACW Ranger District

The Ava/Cassville/Willow Springs (ACW) Ranger District of Mark Twain National Forest works in multiple ways to keep people healthy, including monitoring air quality, utilizing good prescribed burn and smoke management tactics, and providing outdoor recreation opportunities for everyone to enjoy.
 
Hercules Glade Wilderness on the Ava unit is Mark Twain National Forest's only Class 1 Airshed and is a site of the Forest’s only Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) monitoring sites.  Local operators change the stations’ particle-laden filter cassettes weekly and ship them back to the Air Quality Research Station at University of California at Davis.
 
Rick Wyman, a landowner near Hercules Glades Wilderness, is the local operator who performs this task.  His family has performed this function for several years.  Rick takes great pride in his work and it shows.  The Forest received an email from the Regional Air Quality Specialist out of Milwaukee, WI saying the Hercules Glade IMPROVE site had a 100% collection rate, and commented in the email, “That is terrific!” 
 
His perfect track record speaks to Rick’s continued commitment to this important program.  Rick also volunteers with the ACW District and is a dedicated steward of the land who volunteers to clean up trash dumps, and even formed the group Mark Twain Forest Friends to keep the Forest clean.  Check them out on Facebook.  
 
Trees also help keep our air clean!  A planting crew will be planting 41 acres with shortleaf pine seedlings in the northern part of the Willow Springs unit this spring.  The planting will help maintain shortleaf pine as part of the mix of tree species growing in the area.
 
Sometimes when the air gets wild, storms knock down a lot of trees.  Timber personnel are currently working on preparing another blowdown timber sale and organizing resources to give help to other districts across the forest to clean up after these storm events.
 
Forest wildland firefighters are implementing prescribed burning projects as weather allows.  Helicopters will support prescribed burning operations across the Forest as well.  Firefighters still maintain readiness to respond to wildfires in case warming temperatures dry out fuels beyond prescribed burning parameters.  These prescribed burning operations follow strict planning and smoke management procedures to minimize negative air impacts to surrounding communities.
 
Several Forest employees are also assisting with COVID-19 vaccination sites across the country with FEMA through the interagency emergency response process.  Knowing everyone is working together for the greater good helps us all breathe easier.
 
Unrelated to air quality, but still very important, the Forest needs to share a Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) update.  CWD winter culling operations are past the midpoint in Stone county on US Forest Service (USFS) property.  Previous updates mentioned how the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) is once again searching for deer with CWD in Stone county on private and public property.  CWD was originally discovered in the fall of 2019 on Forest land when two hunters harvested deer that tested positive for the disease.  Recently, only a few miles away, a deer harvested this past fall on private property tested positive for CWD in southern Stone county after a hunter voluntarily submitted it for testing.  Now officials with the Missouri Department of Conservation are working with willing local landowners and the USFS in both core areas to cull deer and test them for CWD.  So far, a total of 33 deer have been harvested by local landowners and MDC shooting teams in these two areas that cover nearly 50 square-miles. 
 
CWD test results are now back on 26 of the deer harvested and none of them have tested positive for the disease.  Tests are still pending on the remaining seven deer and should be back within a few days.  Once a deer is cleared by the test, meat from that deer either goes back to the landowner or to MDC’s Share the Harvest program which gives the meat to local food pantries in Stone and Taney counties as well as Crosslines in Greene county.  All processing cost is being paid for by a grant from the Conservation Federation of Missouri so there is no charge to landowners or to the Forest.  All deer harvested on Forest Service property are being donated to Share the Harvest.
 
CWD winter culling operations will continue in these two core areas through March 15 and MDC officials hope to have all test results back by April 1.  If you have questions or would like to learn more, you can visit the MDC website or feel free to contact Warren Rose with MDC at 417-895-6881 ext: 1640 or email him at Warren.Rose@mdc.mo.gov
The Ava office is cognizant of the impact of the Coronavirus and we are taking precautions locally.  With this in mind, we are assisting visitors to the office outdoors, as much as possible, or by telephone.  Access into the buildings is limited and a mask must be worn. 
 
If you have any questions regarding the listed activities, please feel free to call the ACW District Office at 417-683-4428.

Howell County News

110 W. Main St.,
Willow Springs, MO 65793
417-252-2123

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