U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Missouri/Mississippi Rivers Confluence Conservation Partnership Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program

A Successful Public-Private Partnership to Conserve the Confluence The Missouri/Mississippi Rivers Confluence is the convergence of the two largest rivers in North America encompassing nearly 300,000 acres of lands predominantly in private ownership. The Missouri/Mississippi Rivers Confluence Conservation Partnership seeks to promote a balance between fish and wildlife habitat and agriculture and community development. This private- public partnership is a signature demonstration of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program. Since 2004, the Missouri/Mississippi Rivers Confluence Conservation Partnership has protected more Landowners replacing native prairie cordgrass on their properties. USFWS than 21,000 acres of private land, photo. and restored and enhanced more than 8,000 acres of wetland habitat Confluence Partners They recognized that nearly 73 on private land in Pike, Lincoln, St. Members of the Missouri/Mississippi percent of U.S. lands are in private Charles and St. Louis counties. Confluence Conservation Partnership ownership and a vast majority of include the Great Rivers Habitat federal trust species used these These wetlands provide migratory Alliance, Ducks Unlimited, Inc., U.S. areas during their life cycle. Intense habitat for millions of migrating Fish and Wildlife Service, USDA stakeholder outreach concluded waterfowl, shorebirds, marsh birds Natural Resources Conservation that the most effective way to and neotropical migrants in spring Service, Missouri Department achieve conservation success was to and fall. The area also supports 68 of Conservation, The Nature provide direct financial and technical state-listed species and five federally- Conservancy, Missouri Audubon, assistance. listed plants and animals. Pheasant and Quail Forever and private landowners and also the U.S. Contact Catastrophic flooding in 1993, 1995 Army Corps of Engineers, Missouri For more information about and 2008, combined with urban Department of Natural Resources, the Missouri/Mississippi Rivers expansion into the floodplain and the Conservation Federation of Confluence Conservation Partnership generated interest from local Missouri. contact Kelly Srigley-Werner, State landowners and organizations to Private Lands Coordinator at 573- join federal and state agencies to About the Partners for Fish and Wildlife 234-2132 ext. 112 or strategically implement conservation Program [email protected]. programs. The Partners for Fish and Wildlife (PFW) program was officially This relationship was the catalyst for established by the U.S. Fish and motivating landowners to maintain, Wildlife Service in 1987. Service protect, restore and enhance the open biologists and numerous conservation space and natural communities of the partners had the vision to look Confluence Focus Area (CFA). In beyond the boundaries of government response, voluntary programs were fee-title holdings and see the need made available through existing to work cooperatively with private federal, state and local conservation landowners through voluntary sources. programs. October 2012