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Jocelyn Robinson

After 50 Years, Missouri Forest Has Grown into a Model of Timber Management

By William Allen

Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, copyright 2001

SALEM, MO. – Leo Drey ’39, the man behind the forest and the state’s largest private landowner, is credited with proving that harvesting timber through individual-tree selection works to preserve the woodlands. As woodpeckers and nuthatches flitted overhead, Leo Drey stepped softly through his Pioneer Forest in the Ozarks and took satisfaction in the changes he’s fostered in the woods over half a century.

Since he bought the first piece of the 160,000-acre forest in 1951, it has grown strong and full, even while he made money from its timber.

“We’ve demonstrated that you can cut trees in such a way that the forest is always here,” Drey said last week, barely audible above the steady patter of raindrops on leaves. “It’s a way that is not only economically beneficial but the forest remains aesthetically pleasing, and people can still use it for hiking, camping and other recreation.”

Drey, 84, of University City, is widely viewed as a quiet pioneer – and by some as a living legend – for what he and his colleagues have accomplished in Pioneer Forest. The forest of oak, hickory and pine is scattered across several counties south of Salem in the heart of the Missouri Ozarks.

Drey (pronounced DRY) is the largest private landowner in Missouri. But what has distinguished him even more is the way he logged the forest – a technique called individual-tree selection.

Unlike clear cutting, which removes all the trees from a section of land, individual-tree selection cuts a few trees here and there. The technique puts a relatively light touch on the land and provides continuous income. The logged forest has a natural character and feel, and it avoids the soil erosion and other watershed damage that often come with clear cutting. Pioneer Forest celebrates its 50th year with a symposium Thursday at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Speakers from around the nation will discuss the impact of Pioneer Forest on forest management, forest restoration, research, education and natural areas.

On Sunday, Drey and others dedicated 61,000 acres of Pioneer Forest in memory of Roger Pryor, leader of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, who died in 1999. The dedicated area is now called the Roger Pryor Pioneer Backcountry.

Two parts of the area also were named for the late Ed Woods and the late Charlie Kirk, both foresters who worked with Drey.

Pioneer forestry

It was Kirk who plopped down next to Drey in 1954 while the two took a break from fighting a fire in a state forest in southern Missouri, not far from his property.

Drey already owned about 30,000 acres of forest at the time. Kirk remarked that National Distillers, a private company, was about to liquidate its holdings in the Ozarks. Soon Drey was in New York negotiating the deal that got him Pioneer Forest’s biggest single acquisition – nearly 90,000 acres. Kirk went to work for Drey.

Drey, who came up with the name Pioneer Forest, added bits and pieces to the forest over the decades, with an inheritance and money he’d earned as assistant treasurer at Wohl Shoe Co.

Drey was the son of a wealthy glass manufacturer (“Drey’s Perfect Mason Jar”). He left Wohl at age 33 to pursue a career in the timber business, partly drawn by his love for the outdoors.

Drey is no snooty millionaire, nor does he have the hard-driving personality of his environmentalist wife, Kay. Rather, Leo Drey is genuinely shy, with a Jimmy Stewart aura about him. He covers his eyes while speaking, as if the light is too bright. Friends say that’s his way of concentrating.

Despite his shyness and urban background, Drey ventured into the Ozark hills, knocking on cabin doors asking perfect strangers if they wanted to sell their forest land.

At that time, Ozark forests were recovering from massive clear cutting in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Drey and his foresters wanted to show that a private forest owner could manage his land responsibly, with an eye toward conservation.

“He wasn’t trying to be a model of this kind of land management,” said Susan Flader, a professor of history at the University of Missouri at Columbia, who will speak at Thursday’s conference. “He was just trying to prove it could be done.”

When clear cutting became the preferred method of logging in Missouri and elsewhere in the 1960s, “Leo began to realize he had a new mission,” Flader said. Pioneer Forest became a unique laboratory.

Drey’s foresters set up a rigorous inventory system to collect data. On one-fifth-acre plots on every square mile of Pioneer Forest, they identified each tree and monitored how it grew over the years. These plots were logged the same way as the rest of Pioneer Forest.

The data showed that individual-tree selection was a highly profitable logging technique, even though trees are removed here and there. The technique also better protected the environment, from microorganisms that sustain the forest to the watersheds that feed the area’s float streams. And it works whether the property owner has 160,000 acres or 80 acres, say Drey’s foresters, who have helped smaller landowners. On one acre, for example, clear cutting generally would provide income once or twice a century, while individual-tree selection would provide it every 15 to 20 years.

Key to Pioneer Forest’s profitability is the fact that the economic value of a tree rises with age. A few more years of growth make a larger tree with more marketable wood.

For example, a 12-inch-diameter tree in 1979 would have been worth about $3, Drey’s foresters say. Allowed to grow, the tree – today 16 inches in diameter – is worth more than $30, although inflation accounts for some of that increase.

A State Treasure

In the late 1980s, some Missouri public land management agencies, especially the U.S. Forest Service, finally took note of Drey’s work, Flader said.

The Department of Conservation, long a fierce advocate of clear cutting, now acknowledges the value of individual-tree selection. But department officials say other kinds of logging are appropriate depending on local circumstances.

Drey remains dead set against clear cutting, but he understands the choice when a small, private landowner needs emergency cash.

James Guldin, a scientist with the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station, in Hot Springs, Ark., said he was impressed by Drey’s “stewardship ethic.”

“He wants that land to be in better condition when he leaves this Earth than it was when he began managing the land,” Guldin said. His leadership and low-key, intellectual style have won other admirers regardless of where they stand on forestry issues. “He has changed the whole debate on forestry management,” said Roy Hengerson, Missouri director of the Sierra Club, in Jefferson City. A headline of an Audubon magazine profile about him once chirped, “Every state should have a Leo Drey.”

Drey’s reaction can only be described as, well, bashful.

“I get too much credit for things that I enjoy doing, things I’m doing because I want to do them,” Drey said.