Blue River Project Office

Teeple Glade in Harrison County
Photo © TNC

The Blue River

Home to Countless Species

The Blue River basin is an unusual tapestry of forestland, caves, sinkholes, underground rivers and springs that create a wondrous ecosystem. The basin is home to rare plants and even rarer animals. The hellbender salamander, which is not found anywhere else in Indiana, lives here. The caves underlying this land provide habitat for insects and crustaceans found nowhere else in the world.

Bats also thrive in abundance. One third of the federally endangered Indiana bat population hibernates here each year, with some migrating hundreds of miles to do so.

Much remains to be discovered about this region, especially its caves and subterranean life forms, which are difficult to study.

Location

The Blue River of southern Indiana rumbles swiftly through Washington, Harrison and Crawford counties. Its path takes it from the city of Salem and through the richly wooded hills of Harrison-Crawford State Forest. The Blue then spills into the Ohio River.

Size

The Blue River basin encompasses 600 square miles and contains 375,000 acres of rugged hardwood forest and rural terrain within seven counties of Southern Indiana.

Plants

A recent ecological survey uncovered one of North America’s rarest plants — Short’s goldenrod, which is federally listed as an endangered species — near the town of Corydon. This is one of two areas in the world known to harbor wild populations of this goldenrod.

The Blue River basin also contains rare karst plant communities such as limestone glades, chert barrens and upland sinkhole swamps. The office continues to search for rare, threatened and endangered plant species. Yellow lady-slipper orchids, rare Dwarf ginseng and Shining clubmoss are a few examples of plants already identified in 2007.

Animals
Although a cornucopia of insects, crustaceans and other animals call the Blue River home, the Indiana bat — listed federally as endangered — is of special concern. Its numbers are dwindling and researchers have not yet determined the reason.

First discovered in Wyandotte Cave, the Indiana bat is the only mammal named for the state. Vandalism and disturbance to caves during hibernation likely caused their population to drop. Poorly designed gates installed on some of their favorite caves also prevented them from reaching hibernation spots. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now has declared these sites protected. The Indiana bat once numbered in the millions. Now, there are about 350,000 of them.

The Allegheny woodrat, the rarest of all mammals in Indiana, was given a much needed boost this spring with the help of the Blue River office, Purdue University and the Indiana Fish & Wildlife Services. The woodrat has been bordering on the brink of extinction with populations declining dramatically over the past decade. In order to help these animals, TNC and partners released 54 Allegheny woodrats in hopes to increase genetic diversity of the population and to learn more answers to the cause of its decline. Tracking has shown that 75% are still alive and healthy.

Why The Conservancy Chose This Site
The Blue River basin features three interrelated features that make this area biologically unique and valuable. They are:

• a high quality river predominately fed by cool springs, which allows aquatic life needing lots of oxygen to thrive;
• large tracts of forestland, as well as glade and barrens communities, that support globally rare and endangered species;
• an underpinning of limestone bedrock interspersed with caves, sinkholes and underground rivers that support a poorly understood assemblage of rare species.

What the Conservancy Has Done/Is Doing

To preserve this river basin, The Nature Conservancy is working closely with the people who live here, including the many landowners along the river’s path. In partnership with them, the Conservancy is working to conserve and protect this area's unique and valued natural resources before what still remains is lost.

By planting trees and working to prevent unsustainable logging, the Conservancy is helping prevent soil erosion to create cleaner water for aquatic life to thrive. By inventorying the plants and animals that live here, scientists are developing a better understanding of the basin’s unique diversity. These findings help guide Conservation by Design, our science-based approach to preservation.

The Conservancy is so committed to this that we initiated the “Forest Bank” as a conservation tool for use in our forested project areas. Used primarily in areas that are near, but not within, “core” conservation sites such as glades, streams, and public lands, the Forest Bank allows the Conservancy to actively manage large tracts of forest for those ecological attributes that best advance our mission. On these lands we can actively use harvest practices to create appropriately sized canopy openings that would be unacceptable on core nature preserves. The Forest Bank allows us to expand our influence to the landscapes that surround our preserves, ensuring that larger swaths of oak-hickory forest will flourish.

The Blue River project office also is working to preserve other places here, such as Mosquito Creek and Teeple Glade.