Conservation Opportunity Areas
Opportunities to conserve Missouri’s wildlife treasures are all around us–-on the farm, in the city, at the edges of Ozark forests, in tall grasslands and in the current of Missouri’s many rivers and streams.
The Missouri Department of Conservation has joined with partners to take an “all wildlife conservation” approach. This framework of Conservation Opportunity Areas identifies the best places where partners can combine technology, expertise and resources for all wildlife conservation. Focused efforts in these conservation opportunity areas will ensure that Missourians continue to enjoy a rich and diverse natural heritage.
Conservation Opportunity Areas are priority places for all wildlife conservation. Even so, conservation remains important across all of Missouri.
Each Conservation Opportunity Area has a stakeholder team that developed a Conservation Opportunity Area profile. Teams determine goals and conservation actions. They also have resources available for public and private landowners interested in joining their local Conservation Opportunity Area efforts.
For more information about a specific Conservation Opportunity Area or stakeholder team, contact Dennis Figg (dennis.figg@mdc.mo.gov).
Some of the statewide partners involved in identifying Conservation Opportunity Areas include:
- American Fisheries Society
- Audubon Missouri
- Central Hardwoods Bird Conservation Region
- Conservation Federation of Missouri
- Ducks Unlimited
- Grasslands Coalition
- Missouri Conservation Heritage Foundation
- Missouri Department of Natural Resources
- Missouri Natural Areas Committee
- Missouri Prairie Foundation
- Missouri Resource Assessment Partnership
- National Park Service
- National Wild Turkey Federation
- Ozark Regional Land Trust
- Quail Unlimited
- The Nature Conservancy (Missouri Chapter)
- United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service
- United States Department of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service
People have long been drawn to the cool, clear waters of Bonne Femme and Little Bonne Femme Creeks. A grist mill and whiskey distillery once operated along the stream flowing from Devil's Icebox Cave. Today, small farms and residential neighborhoods surrounded the nearby city of Columbia. (.pdf)
Bryant Creek runs through 39 miles of hilly, rocky, oak-pine forests in a remote and sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. These large tracts of forest contain streams, springs, caves, fens, sinkhole ponds and cliffs, providing habitat important to a variety of plants and animals. (.pdf)
The Cape Hills Conservation Opportunity Area borders the Mississippi River near Cape Girardeau. Featuring hardwood forests of white oak, black oak, tulip poplar and hickory, the Cape Hills support a distinctive type of forest found more often in the Appalachian Mountains than in the Ozarks. (.pdf)
The Cole Camp/Hi Lonesome Conservation Opportunity Area provides an excellent opportunity to conserve prairie wildlife and high quality streams at a landscape scale. Over 1,500 acres of remnant prairie are currently owned and protected by the Nature Conservancy, Missouri Prairie Foundation and Missouri Department of Conservation. Privately owned remnant prairies adjoin the existing conservation network, and additional grasslands hold significant restoration potential. (.pdf)
Cuivre River Hills Conservation Opportunity Area contains many natural features (caves, sinkholes, glades, springs and rocky creeks) found more often in southern Missouri Prairies and oaks savannas formerly occupied scattered hilltops and graded into oak woodlands and forests. Today, most prairies and bottomlands have been transformed into pasture and croplands. A few large blocks of second-growth timber remains in areas with rugged terrain. (.pdf)
The Current River Hills Conservation Opportunity Area includes one of the largest tracts of forests and woodlands in the lower Midwest. The region is best known for extensive shortleaf pine-oak forests and woodlands that supported an exceptional timber boom at the turn of the twentieth century. (.pdf)
The Eleven Point River meanders through the picturesque Ozark hills of Southern Missouri. It's course is cut in the shadows of steep bluffs, through sloping forested valleys and low-laying riparian ecosystems. (.pdf)
The Golden Grasslands Conservation Opportunity Area includes two focus areas identified by the Missouri Grasslands Coalition as important landscapes for the recovery of the greater prairie chicken. The landscape is a combination of existing native prairie habitat, land suitable for grassland restoration and open land suitable for grassland restoration and open land suitable for grassland wildlife. (.pdf)
Grand River Grasslands is a native grassland and prairie restoration area in the Central Tallgrass Prairie Ecoregion. The diversity of grassland wildlife, including a small population of greater prairie-chickens, confirms that this is one of the best places in Missouri to restore a functioning tallgrass prairies ecosystem. (.pdf)
On July 4, 1804, the Lewis and Clark expedition traveled a stretch of the Missouri River between Kansas City and St. Joseph. At that time, the river flowed in a braided channel with numerous islands, side chutes and backwaters. Nearly annual flooding created a complex and shifting mosaic of bottomland forest, marshes, wet prairies and sandbars. Large portions of the bottoms were open prairie and marsh complexes. This particular stretch contained small amounts of wet prairie and more extensive timberlands. (.pdf)
The LaBarque Creek Watershed features a high quality stream and rugged sandstone terrain surprisingly close to St. Louis. A combination of ecological values and development patterns make the water an excellent candidate for conservation efforts. (.pdf)
Steep-sloped loess hills occur only in the extreme northwestern corner of Missouri. These bluffs run in a narrow band along the Missouri River floodplain. Loess (pronounced "luss") is ancient, wind-blown soil. thousands of years ago, melting glaciers deposited silty soil in river valleys. Wind blew the soil, depositing it as piles of deep loess on the adjacent uplands. (.pdf)
The Grand River is a large prairie river that once meandered across a broad, open floodplain. The floodplains of Grand River and its major tributaries were historically mosaics of marsh, wet prairie and bottomland forest. Upland prairies occurred in the surrounding plains. (.pdf)
The Missouri River seen by the first European explorers was a broad, shallow, meandering river with many braided channels, sandbars and islands. This dynamic system of changing water levels resulted in sand flats, riverfront forests and bottemland forests. The river and its adjacent floodplain supported a remarkable abundance and diversity of wildlife. Native Americans heavily utilized these floodplains for their abundant natural resources. (.pdf)
The Marmaton/Wah-Kon-Tah Conservation Opportunity Area includes the last unplowed wet prairie expanses in Missouri, extensive wetlands and some of the best remaining bottomland woodlands in the region. A 15-mile stretch of wet prairies, bottomlands woodlands and marshes occur where four rivers converge to form the Osage River. Tallgrass prairies and prairie headwater streams can be found in the uplands, some of the best remaianing examples of tallgrass prairie landscapes. (.pdf)
The Middle Meramec Conservation Opportunity Area includes land within a roughly seven mile perimeter of the middle reaches of the Meramec River and its major tributaries. The topography is hilly, rugged and largely forested, with embedded glades, fens, caves, springs and other interesting natural features. (.pdf)
The Mingo Basin formed 18,000 years ago when the Mississippi River shifted east, leaving a dense swamp in the abandoned river channel. Today the basin includes backwater sloughs, marshes open water, bottomland forests, cypress-tupelo swamps, shrub swamps, upland woodlands and agricultural land. (.pdf)
In 1721, French explorer Father Pierre Francois de Charleviox wrote of the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, "I believe this is the finest confluence in the world. The two rivers are much the same breadth, each about half a league; but the Missouri is by far the most rapid, and seems to enter the Mississippi like a conquerer, through which it carries its white waters to the opposite shore without mixing them..." (.pdf)
The Missouri River Hills landscape is the largest contiguous block of forested land north of the Missouri River. Serving as the boundary where glaciers once met the Ozarks, the tallgrass prairies from the north transition into the rugged forest hills and this greatly influenced the wildlife of the area. Today the Missouri River Hills still support an interesting mosaic of forests, woodlands and glades. A drive along Highway 94 provides terrific views of dramatically rolling hills and impressive limestone cliffs rising above the Missouri River floodplain.
The Mystic Plains Conservation Opportunity Area (COA is a private land initiative in southeast Sullivan County and southwest Adair County. Identified as a Grasslands Coalition Focus Area in 1998, the Mystic plains features large grassland expanses. (.pdf)
The Niangua Basin Conservation Opportunity Area features forests, woodlands, savannas and prairies along the Niangua and Little Niangua rivers. Springs, sinkholes and fens are signs of the region's vast underground network of caves. Water moves rapidly between the surface and groundwater in cave landscapes, allowing pollutants to easily affect water quality. (.pdf)
Surrounded by oak and pine woodlands and forests, much of the North Fork of the White River is located within Mark Twain National Forest. Historically, pine-oak woodlands occupied high elevations and graded into oak-pine and mixed-oak forest in deep valleys. (.pdf)
Early explorers of the Bootheel region of southeast Missouri discovered a landscape of floodplains with giant trees. Bottomland trees grew to enormous proportions in the fertile earth. Regular flooding over millions of years created bottomland forests, swamps, marshes and oxbow wetlands Over the past two centuries, settlers cleared the land and drained the swamps to create productive cropland. (.pdf)
In a snow-filled December of 1845, the first General Land Office land surveyors in the Roaring River area wrote "high, steep, and rocky Mountains are so Slippery that it is not possible to Travle over them without indangering ones life." They left to find more gentle terrain, but before doing so recorded their observations of scattered oak woodlands and expansive grassy glades. True forests occurred only in the rich bottomland valleys. (.pdf)
The St. Francois Mountains formed 1.5 billion years ago at a time when molten lava still flowed over much of the Earth's surface. Huge pockets of magma welled up in dome shapes and then slowly cooled, forming igneous rock. Over time, these domes sank beneath oceans and were capped with hundreds of feet of sedimentary rock. Later, geologic forces raised the land again. Erosion wore away overlaying layers of dolomite and sandstone, and the rounded igneous comes, or knobs, became the characteristic mountains of the Ozarks. (.pdf)
Located in the Spring River watershed in southwest Missouri, Shoal Creek Conservation Opportunity Area highlights a high quality stream, the highest continuously flowing waterfall in the state, several tallgrass prairie restoration sites and the best remaining chert glads in Missouri. Shoal Creek flows through Joplin, providing and excellent opportunity to involve area citizens in habitat restoration and conservation. (.pdf)
Sand prairies are the rarest natural community in southeast Missouri and certainly one of the rarest statewide. When the Corp of Discovery landed on the "Spanish-side" after rounding the tip of Illinois-country they sent hunters inland into what is now Southeast Missouri. They returned with Greater prairie chickens. (.pdf)
The Spring River is located in southwest Missouri and flows west into Kansas and Oklahoma. Natural springs are numerous along the river, but most are small. Because of its location between the Ozarks and prairie regions, the Spring River supports one of Missouri's most distinctive combinations of fish, crayfish and mussels. (.pdf)
Looking over this northern Missouri landscape, it's easy to imagine why residents refer to the area as "thousand hills." Gently rolling hills and steep, rugged inclines can be found in this patchwork of forests, woodlands and grassy meadows. (.pdf)
Located in southeast Taney County and southwest Ozark County, the Tumbling Creek Cave Ecosystem features open oak woodlands with scattered rocky glades. Existing glade and woodland complexes provide habitat for a variety of wildlife, including species of conservation concern such as Bachman's sparrows, painted buntings and eastern collared lizards. (.pdf)
Over 6 million acres of savanna occurred in Missouri prior to the 1800s. Today, these grasslands with scattered trees and shrubs have nearly vanished. Savanna and associated prairie and woodland natural communities were historically maintained by natural or human-caused fires and grazing by bison and elk. (.pdf)
When Jackson County was surveyed in 1826, the General Land Office notes describe a diverse and pleasing mosaic of heavy forest, open prairies and dry, semi-open oak dominated woodlands. The Blue River coursed through rich bottomland forest, wet prairie and marshes on its way to join the Missouri River. (.pdf)
Early land surveyors described the landscape surrounding the Gasconade River as "hilly, stony, thin soil, unfit for cultivation. " Oak woodlands, savannas and forests occupy the uplands with glades scattered throughout. Bottomlands were historically wooded. Like much of the Ozarks, the Upper Gasconade landscape includes sinkholes, losing streams, springs, fens and caves. (.pdf)
In 1874, Campbell's Gazetteer of Missouri recorded the following notes about Wakenda Creek. "The Wakenda abounded with fine fish, and on its banks and in the adjacent timber were found deer, elk, buffalo, turkeys and other game in abundance. The Indians thinking that a stream where the Great Spirit had placed such quantities of game and fish, must be sacred, dared not destroy or kill anything in the neighborhood, except on festival days, and their festivities were always held on the banks of this river, bearing its name 'Wakenda' Meaning God's River." (.pdf)
Once dominated by a sea of tallgrass prairie, the Western Cherokee Grasslands is now a patchwork of pasturelands, crop fields, formerly mined lands and native prairie remnants. (.pdf)
Our hills ain't high, but our hollers sure are deep. At least that's how early settlers of Southwest Missouri described their grand hills and hollows. For more than 250 million years, the land surface was exposed to the weather, while the rest of the state was covered by alternating glaciers, seas and floods. Uplifting rock, followed by stream erosion, created the region's winding hollows, steep cliffs, caves and springs. Early explorers described the landscape as a mix of open parklands, glades and woodlands. (.pdf)
