The Nature Conservancy - LMR - The Lower Mississippi River Program

The Lower Mississippi River Program

The decades-long progress of conservation efforts along the Lower Mississippi River (LMR) can be seen in numerous wildlife refuges operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in state wildlife management and natural areas and in sites preserved by The Nature Conservancy and other non-profit organizations. In addition, as more private landowners have become aware that restored wetlands improve water quality, help control floods and reduce erosion, participation in voluntary conservation programs, such as the federal Wetlands Reserve Program, has increased.

The Conservancy’s chapters in seven states – Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee – long have been at work along the Lower Mississippi. In collaboration with those chapters, the Conservancy established its Lower Mississippi River Program, joining the Upper Mississippi River Program as part of the global Great Rivers Partnership. The partnership enables new ecological science and innovative conservation methods tried and deemed successful in any river basin to be exported to benefit other such basins around the planet.

Working with numerous governmental and private-sector partners, the Conservancy is now addressing ecological threats and conservation opportunities in the LMR alluvial plain at 18 priority conservation sites and by developing broader strategies to address region-wide threats.

An example of the Conservancy’s broad strategies and partnership efforts can be seen in the Sustainable Rivers Project, a national effort being undertaken with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It is aimed at devising and implementing innovative methods of water management, such as modifying water flows through Corps-operated dams, to simultaneously meet human needs while sustaining downstream habitats and the diversity of life that thrives in them. In the LMR region, the Conservancy and the Corps are undertaking this effort on the White and Little Red rivers in Arkansas and the Black River in Arkansas and Missouri.

Other partners in the Conservancy’s Lower Mississippi efforts include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, other agencies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, state wildlife agencies, private businesses, legislators, farmers, landowners and other non-profit organizations.

In addition to pioneering ways to reduce the effects of stream changes, the LMR program is seeking to address water quality issues and altered and fragmented habitat. Its efforts in these areas involve such approaches as protecting critical habitat by acquisition of lands and conservation easements, reforesting marginal farmlands through incentive-based programs, seeking increased federal and state funding for such wetland restoration programs, recreating corridors of forested wetland habitat needed by birds and other wide-ranging species, developing new wetland restoration techniques and supporting sustainable agricultural and forestry practices.

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LMR Program

Priority Sites