Missouri Stream Team # 2172

The Missouri Stream Team program celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2009. The citizen-led stream conservation movement is a joint effort of the Conservation ...

Volunteers were making a difference all over the state. In the Springfield area, the annual James River Rescue became a symbol of the local passion for Ozark streams. Holly Neill: I mean, every year this grows and before we even start advertising, we’ve got people calling saying when’s the cleanup going to be, so they definitely like it and you can see from the turnout that it is definitely something that they demanded. Bob Schultz: The Springfield area just turns out for these kinds of things great. They get good media coverage and the citizens turn out for these events. That’s the way the program was set up, to respond to what people wanted to do, you know a lot of people wanted to protect and improve streams in Missouri. We weren’t going go tell them what to do, we just tried to provide support for what they were interested in doing. Bobby Wixson: It’s great fun, and it’s a wonderful thing for the environment. So it’s a great day. I mean we are doing a wonderful thing, cleaning up the river, and people are having a wonderful time.