U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Lower Mississippi River Fisheries Coordination Office

Station Facts Activity Highlights ■ Established: 1994. ■ Development of an Aquatic Resource Management Plan to ■ Number of staff: one. restore natural resources in the 2.7 ■ Geographic area covered: million-acre, leveed floodplain of Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, the Lower Mississippi River. Mississippi, Missouri, and ■ Publication of the LMRCC Tennessee. Newsletter, a regional newsletter Station Goals on aquatic resource conservation photo: USFWS photo: ■ Provide a permanent forum for management issues, and natural facilitating the management of the resource-based economic aquatic natural resources of the development. Lower Mississippi River leveed ■ Provide long-term economic, floodplain. environmental, and public ■ Restore and enhance aquatic recreation benefits to the region by habitat in the Lower Mississippi cooperatively addressing aquatic River leveed floodplain and resource management issues. tributaries. Questions and Answers: photo: USFWS photo: ■ Increase public awareness and What does your office do? encourage sustainable use of the The Lower Mississippi River Lower Mississippi River’s natural Fisheries Coordination Office resources. (FCO) coordinates the work of many different state and Federal ■ Promote natural resource-based natural resource management and economic development. environmental quality agencies that deal with the Lower Mississippi River ■ Increase technical knowledge of the aquatic resource issues. Lower Mississippi River’s natural resources. Why is the Lower Mississippi River photo: USFWS photo: important? Services provided to: The Mississippi River is the fourth ■ Project leader serves as longest river in the world, flowing coordinator for the Lower for more than 2,350 miles from its Mississippi River Conservation headwaters in Lake Itasca, Minnesota Committee (LMRCC); LMRCC to the Gulf of Mexico. Its 1.2 million is an organization of 12 State square mile watershed includes about conservation and environmental 41 percent of the continental United quality agencies charged with States and a small area of Canada. natural resource management in photo: USFWS photo: the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Of the world’s rivers, the Mississippi Ron Nassar, Project Leader Valley; cooperators include River has the third largest drainage 2524 South Frontage Road, Suite C Federal/state agencies, private basin, produces the seventh highest Vicksburg, MS 39180-5269 entities, industry and grant-making average discharge, and is generally Phone: 601/629 6602 organizations. accepted as one of the rarest and most Fax: 601/636 9541 complex riverine ecosystems. More E-mail: [email protected] ■ Public. than one billion tons of commodities, ■ U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, including more than 50 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency. nation’s grain production, are moved annually on the Mississippi River. ■ Conservation organizations. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

The Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, Significant assistance in the comprised of portions of Illinois, committee’s formation was provided Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and the Environmental Protection stretches for 954 river miles south Agency. Formation of the organization from the confluence of the Ohio and was precipitated by the increasing Mississippi Rivers near Cairo, Illinois concerns of natural resource to the Gulf of Mexico. managers regarding the cumulative losses and decreasing diversity of At its mouth, the Mississippi River aquatic habitat as well as the declining nourishes 4.5-million acres of coastal fisheries resources in the Lower prairies and marshes, which are an Mississippi River leveed floodplain. ecological extension of the forested alluvial valley. Together they form a A full-time coordinator assigned wetland complex of unrivaled scope to the Lower Mississippi River in the temperate zone of the western Conservation Committee by the hemisphere. Unlike the 1,380 mile Service reports directly to the reach of the Upper Mississippi River Executive Committee. His primary which is constrained by 29 locks and duties include assisting the Chairman dams, the Lower Mississippi River is and eleven-person Executive free flowing. Committee in providing a permanent forum for facilitating cooperative Historically the Lower Mississippi activities to restore the natural River overflowed onto a 30-125 mile resources of the Lower Mississippi wide alluvial valley and, along with its River, and natural resource-based tributaries, encompassed the largest economic development. floodplain fishery in North America. Because the river was continually creating and abandoning channels in its 15-30 mile wide meander belt, the area was interspersed with permanent and seasonal wetlands. These wetlands flooded shallowly for extended periods almost annually, and there was a great diversity of aquatic habitat types. More than 150 species of fishes were present.

What is the Lower Mississippi River Conservation Committee? National recognition of the sustainable environmental, social, and economic values of natural resources has stimulated significant interest in the multiple-use management of large rivers. The Lower Mississippi River Conservation Committee was formed in 1994 by representatives of the natural resource conservation and environmental quality agencies in the states of Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Louisiana.