ALC Honored for Leadership in Preserving Mississippi River Ecosystem

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

American Land Conservancy (ALC) was honored today by the St. Louis District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) for its leadership on the Middle Mississippi River Regional Corridor Study. Mississippi River Program Director, Jenny Frazier, as ALC’s representative in the Middle Mississippi River Partnership (MMRP), received the award. The award was presented at the August, 2008 MMRP meeting in Chester, Illinois.

The ACOE-funded study is part of a collaborative effort by the MMRP to implement the strategies of its 2005 Coordination Plan, which ALC helped craft.

“Coordination is fundamental to conservation on the Mississippi River and MMRP is where it all comes together,” said Frazier. “This study is our chance to fully flesh out the work ahead so that conservation and restoration are realities on the river, not just bullet points in a plan.”

The study, initiated in 2007, divided the river into five 40-mile reaches between the confluence of the Missouri River and the Mississippi to the confluence of the Ohio River and the Mississippi. Frazier leads a committee assessing the Kaskaskia River to Fountain Bluff reach.

The aim of the study is to create a landscape-level planning tool that will drive regional planning for the river and allow state and federal agencies to more precisely focus on conservation targets. The assessment uses a Hydro Geomorphic Model for planning and analysis, which involves data collection on the river, GIS mapping, determining needs, current status and desired end states, and drafting of proposed conservation and restoration actions.

Four other committees, led by personnel from Southwestern Illinois Resource Conservation and Development, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Forest Service, and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, conducted assessments on other reaches of the river and were also recognized for their efforts.

In the award certificate Colonel Thomas E. O’Hara, Jr., District Commander of the St. Louis ACOE praised the leadership of ALC and other reach coordinators, calling the study “an indication of the region’s true commitment to interagency collaboration” that will “set the direction for long-term ecosystem preservation and restoration” on the Mississippi.

“The ACOE, other agency reach leaders, and all our MMRP partners have been essential to conservation successes on the river,” said Frazier. “This process has helped us improve collaboration and mutual understanding of our work and we are proud to be a part of it.”

ALC’s Mississippi River Program began in 1993 and has resulted in the conservation of 25,000 acres of islands, side-channels, wetlands, and forest from St. Louis, Missouri to Cairo, Illinois. ALC also works with conservation partners on habitat restoration projects. ALC’s work on the Middle Mississippi River Regional Corridor Study continues. A final report is expected by the end of 2008.

CONTACT
Jenny Frazier, Mississippi River Program Director
American Land Conservancy
p: (573) 866.9989
c: (573) 270-4717
jenny@alcnet.org