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The Nature Conservancy employs and supports a variety of approaches to restore and protect freshwater habitats.
We work collaboratively with multiple partners including landowners, federal and state agencies, the agricultural community, the navigation industry, and other conservation organizations to restore the ecological health of the Mississippi and its tributary streams and encourage sustainable use of the lands in the river's watershed.
We also pursue federal and state policy issues that build partnerships and further our conservation objectives.
Following are some of the strategies we are pursuing to conserve the Mississippi River, its tributary streams and the lands within the river's watershed.
- Work with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and others to modify dam operation within navigation pools. Lowering pool levels during the summer exposes mudflats and sandbars. This promotes vegetation growth beneficial for fish, birds and other animals.
- Floodplain reconnection—modify levees to allow for the controlled reconnection of rivers and their floodplains.
- Build islands to restore a diverse river channel complex; reduce shallow, lake-like conditions and slow stream flows.
- Dredge channels and backwaters to restore variable water depths and a meandering river within the floodplain to benefit aquatic habitats.
- Stabilize stream banks to reduce erosion.
- Work with the agricultural community to test new, innovative ways to protect and restore water quality in agricultural watersheds. These could include installing infiltration ponds, bioreactors and artificial wetlands on farmland to remove nitrates and other chemicals from runoff before releasing it into streams.
- Evaluate and implement market-based tools to accelerate restoration: carbon sequestration, valuing nature projects, biomass analysis, nutrient farming.
- Reforest marginal farmlands through incentive-based programs to recreate forested corridors needed by birds and other wide-ranging animals.
- Assist in efforts to permanently protect habitats in the watershed, including forests, grasslands, bluffs and river terraces.
- Remove non-native invasive plants and animals and support programs to reduce their introduction and spread.
Photo credits (top to bottom, left to right): Dakota backwaters in Wisconsin, part of the Upper Mississippi River Basin © Robert J. Hurt; © TNC
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