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The Kindest Cuts, Missouri's Largest Landowner Leaves a Sylvan Legacy. Story by Theresa Dwyre Young.

Backpacker (September, 2005), page 20. There aren't many people who can claim to have spent a lifetime as both a logger and a lover of wilderness. But Leo Drey, 88, of St. Louis, MO, never had much of a choice, the way he sees it.

An avid canoeist and hiker in his younger days, Drey keenly recalls navigating the Current River and camping on its gravel banks. He held off proposing to his wife of 50 years until she proved her prowess with a paddle. "I was a floater before I was a landowner," he says.

So when Drey bought his first parcel in the Ozarks more than 50 years ago, he treated the land right. He began to rehab large plots of clear-cut woods, then harvest the restored forest using single-tree selection, a process that involves cutting down mature trees and leaving the rest to grow. Many environmentalists now champion this technique as a model of sustainable forestry.

And he stayed true to his outdoorsman's ethic by keeping his land open to the public. He helped make the 550-mile Ozark Trail a reality in 1977, allowing planners to channel 13 miles through his aptly named Pioneer Forest. Another 30 miles of trails now crisscross his 154,000 acres, and there's a 61,000-acre backcountry area where backpackers are free to trek cross-country.

Fortunately, Drey's legacy is still growing. Last summer, he relinquished his status as Missouri's largest landowner when he donated 146,000 Pioneer Forest acres valued at $180 million to the L-A-D Foundation, a non-profit organization he set up to carry on his mandate. The gift stipulates that the forest will continue to operate in perpetuity as it has during Drey's lifetime; logging profits will fund environmental programs in Missouri. "I finally had to recognize that I'm not immortal," he says. Lucky for us, his innovative approach to wilderness preservation gets to live on.

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