Sunday, February 10th - 2:00-6:00 p.m.
The Blue Note - Columbia, MO

On Sunday, February 10, Missouri River Relief hosted our third installment of the traveling Wild & Scenic Film Festival at The Blue Note in Columbia, MO.

The event was a friendraiser and fundraiser for River Relief, with the goal of raising awareness on some crucial environmental issues and inspiring action in the community.

Because of the creativity and hard work of the River Relief crew volunteers and the staff of the Blue Note, it was a smooth, inspiring and fun afternoon with friends. River Reliefers baked food, made popcorn and worked all over the venue. Donations for our raffle and silent auction poured in from the community and bidding was hot and heavy! Check out the list on the right for all the generous donors.

Thanks to everyone involved we raised over $5,400 for cleaning up the Missouri River!

Thanks everyone! See you next year!

Below is a list is a list of the films, more info on the festival and links to lots more.

presented by Kasey Whiteman, biologist with Mo. Dept. of Conservation

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

6 p.m. Social Hour
7 p.m. Presentation
At  Hickok's Grill
528 Walnut St. - Kansas City, MO (in the River Market)

Click here for flier (pdf)»
(directions below)

Presentation is FREE!

Please support our partner by coming early for dinner and drinks at this great local establishment! Happy Hour till 7:00

Over the past 100 hundred years the Missouri River has been highly altered which has resulted in the loss of naturally occurring side-channel chutes. In the late `90s and early 2000s the US Army Corps of Engineers started to mitigate for these losses by reconstructing chutes.

Since then our knowledge of how to build chutes, how they are developing and the fish response has increased. Currently more mitigation efforts are slated to take place each year and research continues.

Kasey Whiteman is a biologist with the Mo. Dept. of Conservation studying reptiles, amphibians and fish of the Missouri River. He'll bring that unique on-the-river perspective to a look at how the habitat mitigation project is evolving.

presentation by Joe Harl, St. Louis Archeological Research Center

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

6. p.m. Meet at Big A's Restaurant
6:30 p.m. Presentation
At Big A's Restaurant
308 N Main St. -  St Charles, MO
(directions below)

St. Louis has been a cultural hub going back 12,000 years, since the last ice age. Being at the Confluence of the continent's two longest rivers, it has always been a site of pilgramage, trade and a diversity of cultures. 

Joe Harl and his collegues at the St. Louis Archeological Research Center have been involved in many recent archeological digs revealing this rich heritage here. He will be sharing his knowledge of the parade of cultures in this area, from the first hunting bands, through the widespread Woodland culture, the complex civilization of the Mississippians based out of Cahokia and the later groups moving through as Europeans moved into the area.

There is no one in the area that knows quite as much as Joe Harl about the latest discoveries of our heritage in the Confluence area.

Mr. Harl graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with an MA degree in Anthropology.  He has been performing archaeological investigations across Missouri and Illinois since 1978 with the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and has served on the board of directors for the Missouri Archaeological Society and the Missouri Association of Professional Archaeologists.

Top photo - a wood duck effigy, image courtesy of arc-stl.com. Bottom image from a story in the Suburban Journal

presentation by Rich Guyette, dendrochronologist with Missouri Tree Ring Lab, University of Missouri, Columbia

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

7 p.m. presentation
lower floor of the Les Bourgeois Vineyards Bistro 
in Rocheport, MO (directions below)

Presentation is FREE and open to the public! Come early to purchase a great dinner upstairs at the Bistro!

Rich Guyette is all about tree rings. As a founding member of the Missouri Tree Ring Laboratory, he and his colleagues use their expertise in reading, archiving, analyzing and storing tree rings to provide baseline data useful in a wide variety of fields. From fire histories to drought mapping, from carbon sequestration modeling to climate histories, the information found in these tree rings is wide-ranging.

One of their long term projects has been locating and analyzing ancient "sub-fossilized" oak trees embedded in the alluvial sediment along Northern Missouri rivers including the Missouri, the Grand and other Grand tributaries. With the information they've collected, they have created a database of midwestern climate going back 14,000 years.

Next time you're climbing over piles of driftwood along the Missouri, keep in mind that some of these logs are ancient time capsules of climate and history.

An amazing year on the river, for sure.

After unprecedented flooding last year, we've been witness to this deepening drought. Despite a bit of moisture in the parched midwest, our big rivers continue to drop. Revealing new beaches shaped by last year's high waters. And all the treasures...and trash....contained within them.

Just below Frene Creek in Hermann, MO., a new beach has emerged. And, of course, the locals have been exploring. We've heard stories of a bone flute and a spear point found there. Treasures like medicine bottles from the 1880's. And dozens and dozens of tires.

Gary Leabman, co-owner of Spirit Hill Bed & Breakfast and one of the leaders in Hermann In Bloom, teamed up with Jeff Noedel of CountyNewsLive.com to get some energy behind cleaning these tires up while we had the chance.

Mayor Pro Tem Ron "Pat" Van Booven brought a tractor, Jesse Geltz brought a ATV (he heard about the cleanup in the CNL and knew he'd be needed), Dave "The River Slave" Marner hopped on the planning process and in two days the whole thing came together. 

The Big Muddy Speaker Series is now being held in three locations, Rocheport , Kansas City and St. Charles. The free monthly presentations bring experts to discuss Missouri River issues, biology, hydrology, history and more.

Rocheport Series - More Info»

Kansas City Series - More Info»

St. Charles Series - More Info»

The Kansas City series is held at 7:00 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month at Hickok's Grill in the Kansas City River Market District. Click here for the next presentation and directions»

The Big Muddy Speaker Series is a monthly series of presentations on Missouri River ecology, history, biology and more by experts in their field. There are now three separate series, in Rocheport, Kansas City and St. Charles!

The Rocheport series is held the second Tuesday of every month in the lower floor of the Les Bourgeois Bistro in Rocheport at 7 p.m.  

presentation by Kat Logan Smith, Executive Director of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

6. p.m. Meet at Big A's Restaurant
6:30 p.m. Presentation
At Big A's Restaurant
308 N Main St. -  St Charles, MO
(directions below)

Presentation is FREE! Come early to get a spot and order a great dinner from our partner Big A's

The 40 year-old Clean Water Act aims to protect the “physical, chemical, and biological” integrity of our nation’s waters so our creeks, rivers, and oceans can thrive. For four decades Missouri has left nearly 150,000 miles of waters with insufficient protections to safeguard their health. At the same time, our waters are under increasing pressures from development, agriculture, and climate stress.

How can the Missouri River thrive when the creeks that feed it are unprotected? How can we secure our freshwater resources when 80% of our state’s waters are not held to Clean Water Act standards? How can we ensure that our children and grandchildren can enjoy healthy waters in Missouri?

left - all Missouri Streams; right - streams classified under Clean Water Act
graphic courtesy of Mo. Coalition for the Environment

presented by Dr. Daniel Bowen,
professor emeritus of Biology, Benedictine College, Atchison, KS

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

6 p.m. Social Hour
7 p.m. Presentation
At  Hickok's Grill
528 Walnut St. - Kansas City, MO (in the River Market)

Click here for flier (pdf)»
(directions below)

Presentation is FREE!

Please support our partner by coming early for dinner and drinks at this great local establishment! Happy Hour till 7:00

Since the 1970s, when Dr. Dan Bowen became a professor at Benedictine College in Atchison, KS, and began studying birds along the Missouri River, he’s been restoring river habitat at Benedictine Bottoms.  Today, all along the river, people working in restoration look to the work done by Bowen and his cohorts as a model for their efforts; and the Bottoms continues to be a laboratory for understanding how river habitat should work and for developing techniques to make that a reality.

Dr. Bowen will tell the story of bringing Benedictine Bottoms back to life as a functioning river habitat – what worked, what didn’t, what changes have been made over those 35 years and what lives there now.

Benedictine Bottoms is currently managed by the Kansas Dept. of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism.

photo of Benedictine Bottoms in the Flood of 2011 courtesy of Benedictine College newspaper "The Circuit"

presentation by Ethan Duke, Assistant Director and co-founder of Missouri River Bird Observatory

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

7 p.m. presentation
lower floor of the Les Bourgeois Vineyards Bistro 
in Rocheport, MO (directions below)
Click here for flier (pdf)»

Presentation is FREE and open to the public! Come early to purchase a great dinner upstairs at the Bistro!

The Missouri River and its adjacent wetlands are a major corridor for migrating songbirds, raptors and waterfowl. Recognizing the need to monitor and catalogue this massive avian movement, Ethan Duke and Dana Ripper took their collective bird monitoring experience in 2009 and started the Missouri River Bird Observatory. The mission of this bunch of hard working biologists is to contribute to the conservation of Missouri's migratory and resident birds through scientific research and monitoring, community outreach and education.

Join us as Ethan Duke shares stories of their work in the Missouri wilds, his take on the state of our bird populations and the successes of their inspiring program.