We've helped protect nearly 600,000 acres across the Midwest. In Kansas, our Go Zero program has planted native oak and hickory trees along the Kansas side of the Marais des Cygnes National Wildlife Refuge, restoring more than 775 acres pf forestland.

Go Zero restored 776 acres of native oak and hickory trees along the Kansas side of the Marais des Cygnes NWR. As the forest matures, it is expected to trap an estimated 260,500 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The Marais des Cygnes planting received gold validation in July 2009 and was certified by Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) under its SCS Greenhouse Gas Verification Program.

Learn more about this project here.
Read the gold validation announcement here.
Click here to download the project design document.

Read the interview with Tim Menard, wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to learn how reforestation at Marais des Cynges NWR is helping wildlife, specifically birds, in the area.

The Fund has a rich history of land conservation projects in the Chicago metropolitan region, from facilitating the protection of Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie to managing the Northeastern Illinois Wetland Conservation Act grant program for wetlands restoration. Now, Chicago Wilderness has asked the Fund, in partnership with Applied Ecological Services, to update and refine the Chicago Wilderness Green Infrastructure Vision (GIV), originally completed in 2004. This update to the GIV was one of the recommendations that came out of a green infrastructure workshop convened by the Fund for Chicago Wilderness in 2009.

What Will The Updated Green Infrastructure Plan Accomplish?

The new GIV will suggest ways to seamlessly link woodlands, grasslands, wetlands, streams and lakes within urban, suburban, and rural areas around Chicago. The implementation of the GIV will take place at multiple geographic scales.

Landscape scale:
• Provides critical plant and animal species habitat and wildlife migration corridors for priority species outlined in the Chicago Wilderness Biodiversity Recovery Plan.
• Provides for compatible working landscapes that maintain the economic value of prime agricultural soils.

   

  Regional scale:

• Provides key recreational areas that link people to natural lands and community assets, with existing and planned greenways and multi-use trails mapped by Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP).

   

  Site scale:

• Enhances urban neighborhoods and downtowns through environmentally-sensitive site design techniques, urban forestry, and non-engineered stormwater management systems that reduce the environmental impact of dense urban settlements. Green infrastructure at this scale includes tree-lined streets, community gardens, pocket parks, green roofs, and green boulevards. Recreational networks and stream corridors can be used as ways to physically connect each of these types of green infrastructure features.

How Will The Land Be Protected?

The lands will be conserved through a diverse group of organizations, including forest preserves, conservation districts, state and federal governments, park districts, and private non-profit and for-profit organizations, among others.

When Will The Plan Be Complete?

The updated GIV will be completed in June 2012 for a 7-county area and in November 2012 for the remainder of the Chicago Wilderness area that includes in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

Photos: UGArdener, Flickr (top); Andrew Ciscel, Flickr (bottom).

In 2011, the Fund worked with the National Park Service to add more than 5,500 acres to Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota.

Considered a sacred place by the Lakota, Wind Cave is one of the longest and most complex caves in the world. It's known for its outstanding display of boxwork, an unusual cave formation composed of thin calcite fins resembling honeycombs. On the surface, the park now features more than 30,000 acres of mixed-grass prairie and ponderosa pine forest that provide important habitat for bison, elk, pronghorn, mule deer, coyotes, and prairie dogs.

Wind Cave's New Land

The process of adding the 5,500-plus acres to Wind Cave NP began in 2000 when the Casey family approached the service about selling their property to the park. In 2005, with support from the South Dakota Congressional delegation, Congress passed legislation to expand the park. When the Casey family put up their land for auction in 2010, we purchased the property and held it until federal funding became available in 2011 and then transferred it to the park service. 

The property includes a thousand-year-old buffalo jump and a historic homestead. Native Americans hunted buffalo on the newly acquired land over a thousand years ago, driving them over buffalo jumps, or cliffs. The tract also features Native American tipi rings and other cultural sites.

“The addition of this historic ranch to the park will help ensure that people for generations to come can come to know and love this treasured landscape and have the opportunity to learn about the indigenous peoples of South Dakota,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.

Watch this great video to see the new property and learn more about this historic significance of the land:
Double click the video to expand to full screen.

The Future

Park staff will now start the public planning process to allow visitors to experience this new land. The Visitor Access Plan/Environmental Assessment will determine, among other things, where and if hiking trails will be constructed. Broader planning over the next year will address how to comprehensively integrate this land into the rest of the park and address whether or not any new visitor service facilities are needed and whether or not existing wildlife management plans are adequate.

The Fund works across the United States, saving the outdoors so that future generations can enjoy our nation's landscapes as we do today. We frequently partner with the National Park Service adding land to national parks. Learn more about our work in other parks here.

Photos: Buffalo at Wind Cave National Park / Zane Hickman, Flickr (top); Buffalo Jump, part of newly acquired land at Wind Cave NP / courtesy National Park Service (bottom).

In 2011, we added more than 5,500 acres to Wind Cave National Park in southwestern South Dakota. Wind Cave is one of the world's longest and most complex caves and now features more than 30,000 acres of mixed-grass prairie and ponderosa pine forest.

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  Wind Cave National Park In South Dakota
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  Original Entrance
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  Wind Cave National Park Landscape
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  What Lies Beneath: Wind Cave Interior
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  Descent Into Wind Cave
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  Buffalo Jump, Wind Cave National Park
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  Buffalo At Wind Cave
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  Expanded Lands At Wind Cave

Read more about our work expanding Wind Cave National Park here.

As concerns mount over the high costs and long-term environmental impacts of fossil fuels, wind has become an increasingly important sector of the energy industry. In 2009, the U.S. wind industry supported 85,000 jobs in all 50 states. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that within the next 20 years, 20 percent of the nation’s electricity could be generated by wind.

Of course, more wind power means more wind turbines.

Wind Power In The Midwest

In the Midwest, alternative energy is a burgeoning business. Ohio alone has the potential to generate at least 10 percent of its electricity from wind in the next decade—enough to power more than 1.5 million homes.

It’s a promising start, but wind’s future is far from certain. There is no federal regulator for wind power projects, which has led to a patchwork of state and local regulations across the Midwest. As a result, wind energy developers have been frustrated by protracted, unpredictable and fragmented responses from the natural resource agencies in these states—and the agencies themselves have missed key opportunities to protect fish and wildlife.

A growing number of proposed wind facilities across the Midwest have been delayed or even abandoned because endangered or threatened species—such as the Indiana bat and the piping plover—live at proposed site locations.

How can we protect wildlife as wind energy inevitably expands?

We're working on that.

Wind Power, Birds And Other Wildlife

To speed up the approval of wind energy plants while protecting endangered or threatened species the Fund is preparing a Multi-Species Habitat Conservation Plan (MSHCP) that covers 27 million acres and 30 federally listed species that may be impacted by future wind energy projects across the Midwest region.

That's a pretty big plan.

To prepare this plan we're working with a coalition of eight states—Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio as well as the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and representatives of the wind energy industry. This multistate and multispecies approach means that the wind industry can count on consistent conservation guidelines across these eight states.

By providing streamlined permit conditions, the MSHCP helps developers and operators take a more strategic approach to choosing sites and designing projects. At the same time, the plan ensures that the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service can protect listed species mandated by the Endangered Species Act and still support an energy source that lowers global greenhouse gas emissions.

That's definitely a "wind-win" situation in the Midwest.

Why is the Fund able to be a leader in new conservation approaches
like multispecies habitat conservation planning?

Because of support from you.

Photos: Wind turbines on farmland in Indiana / Jennifer Tomaloff, Flickr (top); Indiana bat / Adam Mann Environmental Solutions and Innovations/USFWS; Piping Plover / hjhipster, Flickr

Stretching more than 2,300 miles from Three Forks, Montana, to St. Louis, Missouri, where it joins the Mississippi River, the Missouri River has sustained the people and wildlife of the Great Plains for centuries. Today, the Missouri River supports a wide variety of interests and uses—agriculture, commerce, conservation, energy, natural resources, recreation, residential and urban uses and water supply—all of which are part of a multi-stakeholder preservation effort known as the  Missouri River Recovery Program.

Through the Missouri River Recovery Program, the Corps is working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, American Indian tribes, state agencies and other agencies and organizations to restore some of the natural characteristics of the Missouri River, thereby allowing the river to support a thriving population of native species while providing for current social and economic values.

Saving A Great Plains Lifeline

As part of this effort to enhance the Missouri River and restore critical wildlife habitat, the Fund joined forces with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to protect 2,400 acres—and nearly seven miles of river frontage—in Cedar County, Nebraska. We purchased the property in July of 2009 and transferred it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers three months later.

The property was identified as the highest priority for the Missouri River Recovery Program. Consisting of riparian and cedar forest, grassland and cropland, the property sits between the Missouri River and a steep bluff and may have been host to an Omaha Indian village in the early 1800s. A large chute or side channel of the Missouri River once ran through the property helping to form an island known locally as St. Helena Island.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, explorers of the country’s Louisiana Purchase and water passage to the Pacific, camped across the river in August 1804. The Conservation Fund has helped protect nearly 30,000 acres along the ten-state route of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery expedition, including several sites along the Missouri River.

“Preservation of this property is a significant step forward for the Missouri River Recovery Program and is critical to bringing back least terns, pallid sturgeon, piping plovers and bald eagles to the area,” said Clint Miller, the Fund's Upper Midwest field representative. “We appreciate the commitment of conservation-minded landowners who are helping to restore the Missouri River and build a natural legacy that will benefit current and future generations.”

Photo (top) by: Dmitry Mozzherin/Flickr

Home to the headwaters of the Mississippi River, Hudson Bay and the Great Lakes, the Upper Midwest boasts an abundance of natural resources. Here, pristine waters sparkle beneath vast forests of spruce, fir and sugar maple, traveling a time-honored journey through the communities of America’s heartland.

But sprawl and land sales increasingly threaten this iconic region, which has long sustained both wildlife and thriving communities. To protect this rare landscape, The Conservation Fund has, since 1985, joined with public agencies, private land trusts and landowners to safeguard nearly 360,000 acres of recreation areas, wetlands, working forests and wilderness in the Upper Midwest.

Accomplishments to Date

Minnesota's Northwoods
In a landmark conservation deal, Minnesota has taken a major step to protect valuable wildlife habitat in its Northwoods region. Governor Tim Pawlenty announced that a team of public and private partners, including The Conservation Fund and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, have preserved more than 51,000 acres of working forest—almost 80 square miles—in Itasca and Koochiching counties, providing key habitat for the Canada lynx, gray wolf, American black duck and American woodcock, and dozens of other valued species.

Chippewa National Forest, Minnesota

Chippewa National Forest embraces 400,000 acres of lakes and wetlands and a crowd of red and white pine, sugar maple and basswood trees that house diverse wildlife, including the highest breeding density of bald eagles in the lower 48 states. The Fund has teamed with the U.S. Forest Service to acquire more than 60 acres of sensitive shoreline along three popular lakes in the forest, as well as an 80-acre island harboring old-growth forest.

Brule River State Forest, Wisconsin
Together with Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, The Conservation Fund has added nearly 6,000 acres of working forestland to the Brule River State Forest, preserving important wildlife habitat and timberlands while also offering more opportunity for the public to hunt, canoe, camp and fish. The Fund tapped its Great Lakes Revolving Loan Fund, largely supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, to acquire the forestland from Wausau Paper.

Palisades Preserve, Illinois
With the aid of a loan from The Conservation Fund, the Great Rivers Land Trust and other partners protected 430 acres of bluffland overlooking the confluence of the Mississippi and Illinois rivers to create the Palisades Preserve. Described as one of the best remaining examples of undisturbed, biologically important lands in Illinois, the preserve’s oak and hickory forests look much as they did 100 years ago. The land supports many species of conservation concern and is located in the largest flyway in North America for migrating birds.

Revolving Funds Support Upper Midwest Conservation

Great Lakes Revolving Loan Fund
In 2002, The Conservation Fund launched its Great Lakes Revolving Loan Fund with a generous grant from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Using capital from this source, the Fund provides technical assistance and bridge financing to nonprofit land trusts working to preserve resources within the Great Lakes Basin – the nation’s most significant freshwater ecosystem. To date, this revolving fund has helped protect nearly 20,000 acres, valued at nearly $56 million, across the region.

Mississippi River Revolving Fund
Across the Mississippi River corridor, from Minnesota to Louisiana, The Conservation Fund is working to support the protection of wetlands, wildlife habitat, working landscapes, greenways and other natural areas. Since 1994, the Fund’s Mississippi River Revolving Fund, established
with a lead grant from The McKnight Foundation, has supported 34 conservation projects, valued at nearly $21 million and involving 17 partners, that protect more than 14,500 acres along the iconic Mississippi.

Thanks to the Fund’s dynamic partnerships, nearly 10,000 acres across the Dakotas—including lands significant to the historic journey of Lewis and Clark—are now permanently protected, shielding the region's natural resources and preserving its unique cultural heritage.

Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota

At the Fund, we work to protect America’s favorite places and in 2011 we protected more than 5,500 acres at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. Considered a sacred place by the Lakota, Wind Cave is one of the world's longest and most complex caves and is home to one of America’s most ecologically-significant bison herds. The park now features more than 30,000 acres of mixed-grass prairie and ponderosa pine forest that provides important habitat and an amazing outdoor experience for visitors. Learn more >>

Neu Wildlife Management Area

In 2004 the Fund brought together a diverse group of conservation partners to acquire and protect more than 950 acres at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers. Explored during the historic journey of Lewis and Clark, the Neu Wildlife Management Area supports one of the most important U.S. populations of paddlefish, named for the distinctive shape of their snouts. Project partners included the American Foundation for Wildlife, North Dakota Game and Fish Department, North Dakota Natural Resources Trust, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

With support from the Richard King Mellon Foundation and local conservation partners, the Fund has safeguarded more than 4,000 acres across Nebraska, protecting the fertile soils and heritage areas that define America’s heartland.

Current Projects

Missouri River Recovery Program

For many of us whose water comes from America’s rivers, what happens “upstream” is critical. It determines the quality of our water and how much water we have now and in the future. For many Midwest residents, “upstream” is the Missouri River in Nebraska. The nation’s longest, it travels over 2,300 miles from Montana to join the Mississippi River near St. Louis.

The Missouri River is not just important for people. Ecologically, the river’s non-vegetated sandbars provide nesting habitat for the endangered least tern and threatened piping plover shorebirds, and backwater sloughs allow the endangered pallid sturgeon to spawn.

We have joined forces with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as part of the Missouri River Recovery Program. Learn more about our work with this program >>

Past Projects

Missouri River & Ponca State Park

We assisted The Richard King Mellon Foundation in acquiring 400 acres along the Missouri River to preserve an important segment of the Lewis and Clark Historic Trail. This gift, an addition to Ponca State Park, includes more than a mile of frontage on the river and bluffs containing upland game and expansive vistas of the Missouri River Valley. The addition secures important waterfowl habitat and invites canoeists and anglers.