25 Years of Protecting the Cache River Watershed
Cypress-tupelo swamp photo by USFWS. Today is the 25th anniversary of Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge. Located in southern Illinois between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers within the Cache River Watershed, the refuge is part of the largest remaining swamp wetland in the Midwest and includes some of the oldest living trees east of the Mississippi. The Cypress Creek area has deep historic roots, with John James Audubon spending the winter camped at the mouth of the Cache River in 1810. Here, Audubon described some of his first encounters with Carolina parakeets, passenger pigeons and ivory-billed woodpeckers. The refuge was established in 1990 under the Emergency Wetland Reserve Act, focused on protecting, restoring and managing wetlands and bottomland forests. Today, Cypress Creek includes more than 16,000 acres of cypress-tupelo swamp, bottomland forest, and upland hardwood forest. Our biologists and managers approach this special place from a watershed perspec...