Rodney

Located in Jefferson County in southwestern Mississippi, the Rodney site covers approximately 15,000 acres of privately owned land situated between the Mississippi River and its mainline levee.  It includes high-quality bottomland hardwood forests, oxbow riverine systems and, most significantly, a huge gravel bar where good inventories of mussels, including the rare fat pocketbook, have been recorded. The site also provides excellent habitat for shorebirds, wading birds and the interior least tern, a species listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Strategies and Progress

Because the Rodney site is part of the lower Mississippi batture (land enclosed on the river side of the levee), alterations to the river likely affect the timing, duration, depth and frequency of flooding of the site, which in turn affects the quality of its bottomland habitat. Gravel mining, which is unregulated in the area, poses a potential environmental stress on the site’s mussel and other aquatic species.

The Conservancy has only recently initiated its efforts with regard to the Rodney site, which has also drawn the attention of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Current strategies include conducting a biological inventory of the site as a starting point for developing an area conservation plan.

What's to Gain?

In addition to its significance with regard to mussel and bird species, few sites containing such a combination of aquatic and terrestrial habitats, all of high quality, remain along the lower Mississippi.

Dagmar Wildlife Management Area,
© Byron Jorjorian

LMR Program

The LMR Alluvial Plain
Economics and the Diversity of Life

Priority Sites

Atchafalya River
Bayou Bartholomew
Big Woods
Cat Island Tunica Hills Complex
Cypress Island
Dahomey
Donaldson Point
Hatchie River
Horseshoe Lake
Lower Black River
Lower Yazoo Basin
Mingo Basin
Obion Creek and Bayou de Chien
Pine City Natural Area
Rodney
Sand Ridge Lands
St Francis National Forest
Tensas River Basin

Quick Links

Learn more about The Nature Conservancy in Mississippi.

The Nature Conservancy and its partners work at sites along the entire length of the Mississippi River, from its headwaters in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.