The Nature Conservancy in Iowa Announces $9.5 Million Campaign for Conservation

Campaign will help preserve and conserve six priority areas in Iowa

DES MOINES — The Nature Conservancy in Iowa kicks off their $9.5 million Campaign for Conservation — Saving the Last Great Places in Iowa, the first in its 43-year history in Iowa, in six areas across Iowa this summer.

“We are targeting the six most ecologically important and threatened landscapes for this campaign,” said Leslee Spraggins, Iowa state director for the Conservancy. “By funding efforts with urgent conservation needs, we will be able to make a more significant impact on some of our state’s last remaining intact, native landscapes for future generations.”

The goal is to raise $9.5 million for large landscape conservation areas, which include: the Loess Hills, Lower Cedar Valley, Little Sioux Valley, the Driftless Area, Grand River Grasslands and the Upper Mississippi River. Campaign celebrations are launching the campaign in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Okoboji, the Quad Cities, Sioux City and Iowa City.

Conservation goals for Iowa include the protection of strategically identified land, the establishment of conservation projects in two critically important watersheds, a significant expansion of land management capacity and the re-introduction of bison in the Loess Hills.

The Conservancy has already raised $5.6 million toward the campaign with the help of a $1.5 million lead gift from the Fred Maytag Family Foundation.

“A big part of our work in Iowa is working with local landowners and producers to determine economic and ecological measures that will help improve both conservation and performance-based agriculture,” said Spraggins. “This is particularly important as together we examine water quality issues.”

From Iowa’s largest remaining native prairie in the Loess Hills of western Iowa to northeast Iowa, where the cliffs of ancient limestone are riddled with sinkholes, springs and algific talus slopes, the Campaign for Conservation in Iowa will address the unique landscapes across the state and preserve Iowa’s dwindling natural areas and the way of life they protect.

Examples:

The Loess Hills: the prairie rattlesnake and grassland birds
Home to Iowa’s largest remaining native prairies, the rare prairie rattlesnakes and grassland birds such as bobolinks, the Loess Hills also contain the Conservancy’s Broken Kettle Grasslands Preserves with the largest contiguous prairie in the state. So far, the Conservancy and its partners have conserved 7,000 acres of important habitat. The long-term conservation goal is much more ambitious. With the help of partners and local landowners, the Conservancy hopes to preserve 100,000 acres within the Loess Hills to maintain healthy natural systems within a productive, working agricultural landscape.

Little Sioux Valley: the Dakota skipper
At Cayler Prairie in the Little Sioux Valley, there was the last documented sighting 10-15 years ago of the Dakota skipper, an elusive butterfly. With the Iowa DNR, the Conservancy is working to conserve, restore, expand and connect 20,000 acres of prairie throughout the Little Sioux Valley. Perhaps the Dakota skipper will go from possibly extinct to re-discovered and threatened plants like the prairie bush clover and eastern prairie fringed orchid will thrive again.

Driftless Area: the Iowa Pleistocene snail
In the Driftless area of northeast Iowa, a snail once-thought extinct was rediscovered in the 1980s. The Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have worked to protect 22 of the 37 algific talus slopes that the Iowa Pleistocene snail calls home. This ice-age snail has already gone from extinct to federally endangered. This snail could be removed from the endangered species list by simply conserving its unique habitat.

Conservation cannot be effective if it stops at the borders of Iowa or the United States. The Campaign for Conservation makes a commitment beyond Iowa’s borders to protect areas that affect the health of Iowa’s plants and animals. For instance, the Llanos grasslands of South America are vital to the survival of the dickcissel, a grassland bird that nests in Iowa and winters in the Llanos. The Conservancy is working to protect this grassland in the Llanos and share lessons learned from grassland work in Iowa and other grasslands in North America. In the global context, grasslands are the least protected habitat with less than 5 percent protected.

“What Iowa does in the next three years as a result of the funding from this campaign will have state, national and global implications. From cross-border work on the tributaries and streams of the Mississippi River to the preservation of grasslands and other significant Iowa systems and species, it is our opportunity to save these last great places in Iowa today,” said Spraggins.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading international, nonprofit organization that preserves plants, animals and natural communities representing the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 14 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific.

The Nature Conservancy in Iowa has more than 7,500 members and manages 33 preserves totaling over 6,000 acres. Since the Chapter began in 1963, with the aid of volunteers it has been involved in the protection of nearly 20,000 acres of biologically targeted land in the state, including native prairies, wetlands and woodland communities.