[music playing] ANNOUNCER: The following program is a production of Ozarks Public Television.

Welcome to "Sense of Community."

I'm your host, Gregory Holman.

Today we're going to be talking about Bull Creek.

It's an ancient watershed just south of Springfield, a small tributary of the mighty White River.

The Bull Creek area is rich in aquatic and riverside life.

It's a little bit of Eden in the Ozarks countryside, you might say.

And it relies on stewardship by private landowners to sustain its natural wonders.

For our guests today on "Sense of Community," Bull Creek is a home away from home.

Dr. Bob Kipfer and his wife Barb own property along the waterway.

They fell in love with the place back in 1995.

This year, Bob teamed up with co-author Lauren Bullard to produce a book titled "Saving Bull Creek."

It's published by Missouri State University's Ozark Studies Institute.

The book is a great introduction to the area's natural science and human history.

I hope you'll enjoy our chat about this magnificent natural asset we share in the Ozarks region.

Please stay tuned.

[music playing] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to "Sense of Community."

"Sense of Community" is a public affairs presentation of Ozarks Public Television.

Bob Kipfer, thank you for joining the show today.

You know, what is Bull Creek for you?

And what made you decide to write a book about it?

Well, when we got our land on Bull Creek, I was interested in the history.

And I was writing up a history because MSU students, , researchers and so forth had come down.

I was going to put that together with them.

And then Loring Bullard called me, and Loring's a longtime friend.

And he fell in love with Bull Creek in a different way because he was the head of the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks and passionate about water.

And he said, hey, I want to write a book down here.

And so we kind of drifted into my history and his nature, shall we say.

Now, just for some basics, can you just characterize a little bit?

How big is that Bull Creek watershed area?

My understanding is anybody who's driven down Highway 65, from basically Springfield/Ozark down to Branson has gone down smack dab through the middle of the watershed area.

But can you just give people an idea of how big this place is and where it is, some of those factors?

It's about-- the creek is about 20 miles long, and it goes from Highway-- if you take highway 14 out of Ozark, over through Chadwick and Oldfield, from those headwaters, it goes down to Forsyth.

And 2/3 of the watershed is on the east side of 65, and the entire creek is down 65 on the east side.

But 30% of the drainage comes from the west side of 65.

And we're talking about Bear Creek?

Yes, Bear Creek and other drainage.

If you think about it, most of the roads in the Ozarks here are ridge roads.

That was because original cars didn't want to do this that you do on 65.

So, all of these around here, Highway H and so forth, are actually the upper portion.

It's the marker of one side.

You look down on Swan Creek.

The other side you're looking down on Bull Creek, for instance.

So historically, just from the way we get around here in the Ozarks, a lot of people have a connection with these rivers, even if they may not realize it, right?

Now, I think there's a line in the book in which you and Loring, you're interviewing people, and you're asking them, what's your river story?

And I would like to ask you the same question.

Just what's your river story?

My understanding is you and your wife Barb go pretty far back with Bull Creek with your own family's involvement.

Can you tell us about that?

Sure.

When we moved here in 1973, we kept canoes and kayaks on our car all the time during the summer.

And we would float.

Then, 1995, we were looking for a place out in the country to get away, kind of a non-lake lake house.

And so we ended up buying an A-frame that just happened to have 85 acres with the creek running through it.

And when we did, we saw a huge eroded area from the 93 flood two years before that had really reshaped the valley, virtually.

And that was because there was no trees holding the bank over there.

They'd farmed it right up to the edge.

They taught us about here's what we can do for bank stabilization.

You ought to have riparian trees.

What's riparian?

Well, you need to plant 120 trees.

That holds the soil.

And it should be 50 feet wide.

Well, most of this is only one tree wide.

Riparian is a word that just basically means riverbank.

Right, right.

But the importance of that is more than just holding the bank.

It also shades the creek, which increases the oxygen-- all things that we were learning, we were being taught, at that time.

And so we went on, and rather than 120 trees, we planted 1,200 trees that year.

And that got us hooked on conservation and kind of led us into a new second career when we retired.

Amazing.

So, you know, this is, I think, the obvious thing, but there's a lot of recreation opportunities associated with Bull Creek, like a lot of the waterways around the Ozarks.

Can you just talk about what you see?

You have a property out there, as we've just talked about.

But what do you see people doing to have fun out there?

I think that's probably a way that a lot of people get in touch with the water here in the Ozarks.

I would agree there, although not so much on Bull Creek because aside from a small portion that's on the National Forest, everything else is private property.

And so we do get floaters that put in at various bridges and come down.

And occasionally, people will wade up the creek, and we'll be seeing them down there fishing.

But overall, not like all of the other streams, say, James River and so forth, where there's public access.

But the things that they're drawn to is primarily swimming, for kids, chasing crawdads, all kinds of good stuff, which is good to get them involved in nature because we have a nature deficit in this world.

Well, and so I think you're setting up kind of where I was going to go with my next question without realizing it here.

So a lot of the recreation is maybe somewhat limited because we have private land ownership up and down Bull Creek, in contrast to some of the more federally protected waterways.

You titled this book "Saving Bull Creek."

Got the title right there.

Why did you give it that title?

Why does Bull Creek need saving?

BOB KIPFER: Well, you know, thinking about it, in retrospect, I might have used the word "preserving" but it's the same idea.

It needs that because we are closing in on it.

We have more humans on the planet every day, and we don't have any bigger planet.

And so, trying to preserve natural areas is always a challenge, and it's getting to be a bigger challenge.

And just in terms of how much planet there is, it's important to underscore.

This watershed is surrounded by metro Springfield, Nixa, Ozark, and the Branson area.

So, there is metropolitan development kind of in all four corners.

Is that how you see it and how the history bears it out?

Yeah, that's true.

Now, down in our little world there along Bull Creek, it's more people that wanted to live among nature and now can do so because they can drive to shop in Ozark, for instance, and then go back and live in nature.

So, it's a little bit different kind of home ownership.

And we don't have as many challenges with impermeable surfaces-- parking lots and roofs-- running off.

We do have challenges of fertilizer on your lawn coming in.

But it's a little more pristine, if you would, down there, simply because of the land ownership and the people that are involved on the banks of it.

And this is considered a pretty pristine area.

My understanding from your book is it's known just kind of in ecological terms as a biological reference stream, or also known as a healing center.

And this seemed to be one of the most important aspects of everything I learned from reading your book here.

Can you talk about biological reference stream, and what that is, and why that's important with regard to Bull Creek?

Well, what this means, it's essentially grading all of the rivers that we have and then saying, which is in the best condition?

What do you compare?

So this is really, this is the thing that you say now.

This is what we'd like all of them to look like.

And then from now on down, changes.

Now, much of that has to do with the life in the stream-- not just the fish, but the macroinvertebrates, tiny things that live in the gravel and only come out as dragonflies and then go back into the gravel.

So, I keep thinking of it as an index stream, to say, OK, this is as good as it gets.

This is a benchmark.

BOB KIPFER: Right.

Yeah.

BOB KIPFER: Right.

Yeah.

And so that's incredibly important.

Are there a lot of biological reference streams like that?

Not a lot.

I can't name any of them for you.

But obviously, it's kind of like anything else.

If you say here's the top 100, the number one and number two that other people might argue.

But I think-- GREGORY HOLMAN: Sure.

Often head and shoulders above the rest.

I was curious just about your description of the human history aspects of Bull Creek.

This is something that goes back a long time.

We think-- and we'll get to talk about Henry Rowe Schoolcraft in the 19th century.

But human history in terms of the watershed of Bull Creek goes back many thousands of years before any United States settlement or Europeans come into this area, right?

We have a lot of lithic artifacts-- stone tools.

People call them arrowheads, but bow and arrow didn't come about until much later.

But all of these stone tools we find on-- GREGORY HOLMAN: Are we're talking kind of like spear points?

Atlatl, which was a spear with a throwing stick, and is now a legal method of hunting deer because we've come back.

The drills, knives, the way you chopped your vegetables.

GREGORY HOLMAN: And these are made out of stone?

These were all made out of stone.

And so we found these on the banks.

And Jack Ray of MSU identified them.

He was an expert on this.

And we have points that go back 9,000 years.

So to me, the exciting part is sitting on that bank and knowing that I picked up that piece here, and that 9,000 years ago, somebody was sitting on this bank.

They may have been making tools because we found a lot of flakes where they flake them off.

I could see some of them are broken.

You'd say "darn!"

and start again.

Just the human connection with those Native American people who didn't have tribal names at that time.

These are Indigenous cultures that are so far long ago, we don't know the names of the cultures.

BOB KIPFER: Exactly right.

It's not handed down through Native American tradition or through French explorers or whatever.

And most of those names that we know are ones that we stuck on them.

Later cultures that we added.

OK, wow.

Amazing.

We're going to talk about Henry Rowe Schoolcraft for a minute.

He journeyed through the Bull Creek area around 1819, didn't he?

Can you tell us about that journey and what he found at that time?

We're talking early 19th century, early 1800s, here in the Ozarks.

How long do you want?

I've done reenactments of Henry Schoolcraft for about 20 years.

Henry came here looking for lead.

And he was hoping to make a career within geology and lead and had heard about the lead deposits on the upper James River, which is now where the edge of Springfield.

And so he came through, and he wrote an extensive book with lots of notes on what it was like traveling through.

And I think some of the takeaway of his discussion was that when you walked-- when he came to the-- he had to travel near creeks to have water for he and his horse and his friend, Levi.

And when they came down those creeks, they had to fight their way to get to the water because the river cane was so dense and the trees were so large.

And that was that riparian.

He didn't know that, but that was that riparian.

And so, interesting to me.

He's a geologist.

He's had geological training.

90 days and 900 miles, he sees gravel or describes gravel one time, only one time on White River.

Because we think of gravel bars as being-- Just everywhere.

BOB KIPFER: Right.

That's the quintessential part of floating.

But no, the gravel bars were created by John Deere and everybody else cutting right to the edge, taking out the riparian and then washing away.

So an amazingly different landscape to what we see today.

BOB KIPFER: Quite different.

So, about 20 years after Schoolcraft's voyage to the area, we see the introduction of United States civilization in the area.

Can you talk about that era little bit?

The peoples that came to this area were different than the ones for the Missouri River.

Because the folks up on the Missouri River and on the Plains were looking to-- they were looking to raise crops, to have commercial.

Where down here, these were essentially Kentucky, Tennessee, people coming up who lived by hunting and raising the food that they needed and not looking for commercial success.

And there's a whole bunch of various resources on this.

But at that particular time, these were people that came.

They cut down enough trees to build a cabin.

They hunted.

They foraged for the foods that were out there.

And they planted some corn and some cotton and other things.

And so meanwhile, now my understanding from reading, again, "Saving Bull Creek," there's some moonshine and whiskey distilling history.

I feel like we should cover that in terms of, you know, history and folklore of the countryside.

Meanwhile, marijuana in recent years, you've got some cannabis growing even before it was legalized out there.

Anything to add on those?

Well, I'd say we know where there were stills within a few miles of it at one time.

Corn was hard to transport.

It was easier to transport it in a jug, which is what they were doing.

And with marijuana, there was a report of marijuana hanging from our ceiling in our A-frame down there many years ago.

And it was hanging down for drying.

And we did find some patches where marijuana or where, let's say, good soil had been taken up on a rocky hillside with sources of water.

So there's some history of that.

Forests and fires get some important mentions in your book, as far as that interacting with the watershed area.

Can you talk about that and why trees are so important as a marker of the health of the river system?

The Native Americans had been burning for hundreds of years on the upper slopes.

That cut down on the brush, grew more grass, and, therefore, easier hunting.

And so that had gone on.

Fortunately, that had not really affected the streams.

Following that, the early settlers frequently burned to get rid of ticks, they said, and for clearing an area.

That might have had a little bit more effect, but we really don't know exactly how much.

Early on in the book, you mention the idea that a person might hesitate to call attention to their favorite places out in especially the more unspoiled parts of a place like Bull Creek watershed.

And the idea is, then, too many people, if they find out about it, too many people will show up and overrun the place.

Which made me think, well, it kind of begs the question, why write a book calling so much attention to the Bull Creek watershed?

What's the reason?

Well, I would say that the defense that we have down there is that it's hard to get to.

You really got to want to get it there.

And because of public access, we don't have as much problem as, say, other major streams have.

And when we have a large area like that, that's when frequently the parks and conservation get into it.

So, our goal was to not to say, hey, come to Bull Creek.

It was to say, why is it important, to educate people what's important to take care of the stream.

When I was in medical school, there was over a doorway, there was saying in Latin.

It said "primum non nocere," which is "first, do no harm."

Because when we operate or we give medicines, there's always a potential for harm, and you have to measure those.

And that's what we're doing on the creek.

We're kind of saying, let's first do no harm.

What is it we can do?

If we want to build a road, a bridge, we build a bridge.

That keeps the cars from driving through the stream.

But we also need to build it in such a way that it doesn't harm the stream.

And you cover bridge building extensively in the book with a specific example.

And somehow it went right, and somehow it went wrong.

And people interested can find out.

So that segues to one of my questions that you hit very well.

Toward the end of the book, you use this phrase "ethically driven neighbors."

And you write-- this is a quote-- "Ethically driven neighbors connect through a web of shared values, of outlooks and approaches that seek to protect the Earth."

In just simple terms, can you lay out some of the approaches that you're talking about there and some things that you think are going to work in terms of that preservation you were talking about earlier?

Well, certainly, certainly being aware of what is running off of your land into the creek is part of it.

The key to conservation is education for all of us.

And so, it's a matter of getting, for instance, a city dweller like myself that just lands down there all of a sudden educated to understand why it's important, what can be done, and then doing the right things.

If Barb were here, we would have another half hour on invasive species and native plants because native plants feed the system.

Everything, as one writer said, Doug Tallamy said, "Sunlight feeds all of us."

And so it comes through plants.

So, if you have invasive species or non-native plants that an insect or a butterfly comes up and scratches its head and says, What do I do with this?

that doesn't help the system.

With native plants, there's going to be something that's going to eat it.

And that's important.

So, getting our neighbors and other people that come down to understand the importance of native species, for instance.

Do you believe that through development or climate change-- seems like the two major reasons-- human encroachment will ultimately destroy Bull Creek?

Or do you think these ethically driven neighbor practices will hold on to it for us?

I don't think-- destroy, I think, is too large a term.

Damage.

So, what we're trying to do-- I'm trying to do, and I know Loring is in the book, is to mitigate the damage and to educate so that people don't create the damage accidentally, if you would.

Now, this is not a phrase that-- I think you didn't use this in your book.

But the idea of private homeowner, private landowner stewardship, I think, is strongly present in the book, even if it's not explicitly stated.

Now, you and Barb establish something called a stream conservation easement-- your wife and you and established-- through the state government, as well as an irrevocable trust with Missouri State University.

And can you just briefly, in the time we have left, explain what those arrangements are, what they mean for the Bull Creek watershed, and why they're important to your family?

Conservation easements in general are a legal document that says-- let's say it says you can't build within this far of the stream-- a number of things that you can't do.

And when I sell that land, it goes with it.

And so that way, I'm sure that somebody else who may not have the same ethic won't cause the damage.

In this case, we had the ability to go further and say, MSU says, I won't sell this for 50 years.

And we have three trustees to watch over it and make the decisions.

And we have money set aside for the management of it.

So, we have the confidence that it will go on to live ethically on the land.

With those stewards joining along with the stewardship-- BOB KIPFER: Exactly right.

--you and Barb have tried to do.

Well, if you're just joining us on "Sense of Community," we've been chatting with Bob Kipfer with co-author Lauren Bullard.

Their new book is "Saving Bull Creek."

It's all about this 36,000-acre watershed just to the south of Springfield, forming a core ecological heartland, really in Stone and Christian and Taney counties.

Bob, thank you so much for joining us on the show today.

I've enjoyed it.

Thank you.

GREGORY HOLMAN: Thank you very much.

We want to leave you with where you can find more information about "Saving Bull Creek."

I'm Gregory Holman, your host.

Thank you for watching our program.

Until next time, goodbye.

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