  We investigate the growth of hydromagnetic waves driven by streaming cosmic
rays in the precursor environment of a supernova remnant shock. It is known
that transverse waves propagating parallel to the mean magnetic field are
unstable to anisotropies in the cosmic ray distribution, and may provide a
mechanism to substantially amplify the ambient magnetic field. We quantify the
extent to which temperature and ionisation fractions modify this picture. Using
a kinetic description of the plasma we derive the dispersion relation for a
collisionless thermal plasma with a streaming cosmic ray current. Fluid
equations are then used to discuss the effects of neutral-ion collisions. We
calculate the extent to which the environment into which the cosmic rays
propagate influences the growth of the magnetic field, and determines the range
of possible growth rates. If the cosmic ray acceleration is efficient, we find
that very large neutral fractions are required to stabilise the growth of the
non-resonant mode. For typical supernova parameters in our galaxy, thermal
effects do not significantly alter the growth rates. For weakly driven modes,
ion-neutral damping can dominate over the instability at more modest ionisation
fractions. In the case of a supernova shock interacting with a molecular
clouds, such as in RX J1713.7-3946, with high density and low ionisation, the
modes can be rapidly damped.
