The Nature Conservancy. Protecting nature. Preserving life.™

The Nature Conservancy is holding a project day to restore the native canebrakes along bottom-land sections of the Current River. This all-day project will involve participants using shovels to dig up and re-plant cane, moving cane from pickup truck to trailer, pruning the cane with loppers to a more manageable height and flagging planted cane for future identification.

Date: Saturday, March 29, 2008

Time: 9:30 a.m. - 3 p.m.

What to wear/to bring: Appropriate clothing for the weather conditions and for working in the field. Please bring your lunch and work gloves. Snacks and all other tools will be provided.

RSVP: Helpful but not required. Neal Humke, Ozarks preserves manager, (573) 323-8790, nhumke@tnc.org.

Where: Meet at 9:30 am at the Missouri Ozarks Nature Conservancy Office, 504 Main Street, Van Buren, carpool to the restoration site.

Background: Giant cane, Missouri’s only native bamboo, once grew in huge stand in the river bottoms of southern Missouri. Some of these stands covered several square miles and were rich in wildlife. The earliest European settlers in southern Missouri discovered that cane made excellent fodder for livestock and the cane quickly disappeared. Only about two percent of the original cane coverage remains intact today.

Canebrakes were home to a wide variety of game and other wildlife. Woodcock, swamp rabbit, songbirds, butterflies, small mammals and reptiles were abundant in canebrakes. Swainson’s warbler, a rare songbird that has been declining in numbers, needs canebrakes for nesting habitat.

Canebrakes also help stabilize stream banks, increase water quality and protect gravel spawning beds of numerous fish and other aquatic species from being suffocated by eroded soil.