Black Island joins list of Missouri conservation areas

The 2,000-acre tract in Pemiscot County will support a wide variety of wildlife and recreation.

CARUTHERSVILLE, Mo.-The creation of a new conservation area (CA) in Pemiscot County will benefit wildlife that has suffered from the loss of wetland areas. It also will benefit Missourians who treasure wild things and wild places.

The Missouri Department of Conservation recently acquired 2,087 acres in the Mississippi River flood plain north of Caruthersville and named it Black Island CA. The area comprises low-lying cropland and forested uplands.

Wildlife Regional Supervisor Harriet Weger said the Conservation Department will work to restore the bottomland hardwood forest that once covered the area.

Over the last century Missouri has lost 90 percent of the wetland acreage it once had. A special set of circumstances, including conservation-minded landowners and a federal wetland conservation program, allowed the Conservation Department to return a little of that land to its original condition, with benefits for wildlife and to Missourians.

Those benefits will include providing homes for such animals as the federally endangered least tern and the swamp rabbit, whose numbers have declined due to loss of suitable habitat. Recreational opportunities at Black Island CA include hunting, fishing and birdwatching. All these activities will be enhanced by management plans that call for planting native trees such as cypress, cottonwood, willow and green ash. The Conservation Department also is exploring the possibility of building a boat ramp on a river chute that connects the area with Gayoso Bend CA.

Not all of Black Island CA's benefits have to do with wildlife and recreation, however. It also will serve as a holding area for rainwater that otherwise would run off immediately, pushing up flood crests on the Mississippi River. Instead, the water will seep into the ground, replenishing aquifers that feed water wells.

Like Missouri's historic wetlands, Black Island CA also will trap sediment and nutrients instead of allowing them to wash into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Conservation Department bought the area from the Wayne D. Shillinglaw Trust and the Lennie S. Watkins Jr. Trust. First, however, the trusts sold perpetual conservation easements to the Natural Resources Conservation Service under the Wetland Reserve Program (WRP). WRP pays landowners to take flood-prone land out of production permanently and restore it to its historic vegetation and water conditions.

The foundations' choice to enroll their land in WRP was based partly on its marginal value for farming. Periodic flooding ruined crops often enough to make WRP enrollment economically appealing.

WRP also helped the Conservation Department. With the conservation easement, the land could no longer be farmed, lowering it's market value. The Conservation Department paid approximately $204 per acre for the land, much less than it would have cost before WRP enrollment. The restrictions on use don't pose any problem for the Conservation Department's plans.

By selling the easements and then the land itself, the sellers got a fair price for their property. The state got a bargain on a multitude of benefits for people, wildlife and the environment.

-Jim Low-

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