The Nature Conservancy’s Emiquon Preserve is Enrolled in Wetlands Reserve Program

The Natural Resources Conservation Service Will Be a Partner in Restoration Efforts

Peoria, IL—September 25, 2006—The Nature Conservancy in Illinois and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) announced today that most of the Conservancy’s Emiquon Preserve in Fulton County is now enrolled in the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP). WRP is a popular program under the federal Farm Bill that offers landowners payment for converting farmland back into natural habitat. The NRCS recently concluded the purchase of a 30-year conservation easement on 6,285 acres of the Conservancy’s 7,100-acre preserve. NRCS and Conservancy officials will work to finalize restoration plans for the property, which is located along the Illinois River.

“Emiquon was once the jewel of the Illinois River and it can be again,” said Bruce Boyd, executive director of The Nature Conservancy in Illinois. “Our goal is to restore the wetland communities at Emiquon as well as the natural process of flooding and drying that is critical to the health of the Illinois River system and many plants and animals that call it home.”

“We’ll work with the Conservancy to develop a restoration and management plan to turn this large land area back to fully functional floodplain wetland habitat,” said Dave Hiatt, an NRCS wetland biologist. “We’re all eager to begin working full force on this project.”

Over the past 150 years, Illinois has lost about 85 percent of its original wetlands - including four million acres in the Illinois River Basin – to agriculture and other development. Today, nearly half of the river’s former natural floodplain is isolated from the river by levees. What survives has been degraded by pollution, excessive sediment, unnatural fluctuations of river levels and invasive species. Restoring floodplain and reconnecting it back to the river is essential to conserving large floodplain river systems including the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Emiquon is expected to become a model for such efforts.

NRCS and Conservancy officials met recently to review a preliminary restoration plan for Emiquon. The next step will be to identify priorities as well as a timeline for actual restoration. Restoring Emiquon to a functioning floodplain-wetland ecosystem would benefit the Illinois River by storing, recycling and managing nutrients and sediments and improving water quality; contributing to a more natural river hydrology including reduced flood frequency, magnitude and associated damages; and providing important habitat for aquatic and terrestrial plants and animals.