Conservation Partners Come Together to Benefit the Fish, Wildlife and People of the Mississippi River Basin and Beyond

Midwest natural resource leaders came together in St. Louis, Mo., last week to strategize collaborative conservation efforts to benefit both wildlife habitat and water quality across the Mississippi River basin.

As part of the Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC), federal, state, non-governmental and tribal partners have been working side-by-side to reduce nutrient runoff from agricultural communities while improving habitat for fish, wildlife and native prairie systems.

The 800-million acre Mississippi River basin provides vital habitat for fish and wildlife, and also supports more than 400,000 farms and large urban populations from Chicago to Des Moines.

High nutrient runoff from agricultural communities in the Mississippi River basin contributes to to hypoxic (or oxygen-less) waters that pour into the Gulf of Mexico, and, thus declines in commercial and recreation fisheries in the Gulf region.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Deputy Regional Director and LCC co-chair Charlie Wooley, said, “By working together we can be more effective in our efforts to improve habitat for fish and wildlife here in the Midwest, and at the same time, benefit our neighbors along the Gulf Coast.”

The Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers LCC also released its 2013 Year in Review this week, a collection of the partnership’s accomplishments over the past year. For more information about the Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers LCC visit http://tallgrassprairielcc.org