Great Rivers Partnership - UMR - Wisconsin

The Upper Mississippi River Program

Pecatonica River: Restoring Prairie Wetlands

The 120-mile-long Pecatonica River, as well as its 50-mile East Branch, originate in and flow through southwestern Wisconsin, where remnants of oak savanna, prairie and grassland landscapes provide glimpses of what was once a pristine regional ecology. Birds such as bobolinks, vesper and grasshopper sparrows, dickcissels and upland sandpipers still thrive in the grassy habitats, but their numbers have declined substantially as grasslands have been lost to other uses and fragmented into isolated tracts.

Along with the remnant grasslands, some high quality wetlands also remain within the Pecatonica River watershed. Their oxbow lakes, shallow water marshes, lowland forests and southern sedge meadow complexes provide critical habitat for a variety of terrestrial and aquatic species, some of which are on Wisconsin’s threatened and endangered species lists. Noting the wetlands’ limited scope and ecological importance, the state government has supported and funded efforts to protect and restore them.

One such project has been undertaken on The Nature Conservancy’s Barneveld Prairie Preserve, a remnant now within the midst of an agricultural landscape of the region’s tallgrass prairies and savannas. In partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association, the Conservancy has initiated restoration of a quarter-mile stretch of the East Branch of the Pecatonica.

High riverbanks of soils prone to erosion have been reshaped into ground that slopes gently toward the stream. Trees such as box elder, silver maple and black willow have been removed from the stream corridor, allowing the reestablishment of native, wet-prairie vegetation to provide healthy habitat for fish in the East Branch and for frogs, turtles and birds along its shores.

In addition to benefiting plants and animals, the project is expected to demonstrate how wet-prairie habitat along a stream, restored with a diverse native seed mix, can improve downstream water quality by capturing and holding sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus when water spills over the stream’s banks. Researchers will be monitoring the East Branch of the Pecatonica in future years to see if water quality and wildlife habitat have improved.

The Conservancy’s Upper Mississippi River Program has selected the Pecatonica watershed in Wisconsin as a priority conservation site, thereby providing an avenue for sharing throughout the Upper Mississippi River basin the lessons learned from this example of prairie wetland restoration.

The Conservancy’s Upper Mississippi River Program, Lower Mississippi River Program and Great Rivers Partnership seek to advance the Conservancy’s national and global efforts to protect the Earth’s critically important freshwater resources for the benefit of the people and other living things that depend upon them for life.

Aerial view of Mississippi and Wisconsin rivers

UMR Program

Priority Sites

Quick Links