On a Mission - The Nature Conservancy in Missouri

Priorities in Action: Conserving key landscapes and building partnerships

OZARKS CONSERVATION BUYER FUND The Ozarks are home to a stunning array of plants and animals, including species found nowhere else on earth. Since 2007, The Nature Conservancy has permanently protected more than 12,000 acres of vulnerable land around the Current and Jacks Fork rivers through the Howard and Joyce Wood Ozarks Conservation Buyer Fund. The fund allows TNC to buy properties and add conservation easements—permanent requirements to sustain the quality of the water, trees and other critical natural features. TNC then resells the properties and returns the proceeds to the fund to buy more properties. HABITAT STRIKE TEAMS Invasive species have the power to completely transform Missouri landscapes, choking out native plants, contributing to the biodiversity crisis and harming ecosystems drastically. One of the ways The Nature Conservancy is tackling the problem is through a new network of Habitat Strike Teams in Missouri. The small but efficient crews are staged in priority areas around the state, currently the Eastern Ozarks, Western Ozarks and Osage Grasslands. The teams work to conserve and connect quality habitat through a mix of techniques, including prescribed fire and mowing down invasives. They are also mobile. The teams were designed to be able to join partners, adding badly needed capacity when needed. The concept is scalable, and TNC plans to add a fourth team in the Grand River Grasslands in northwest Missouri, pending funding. GRASSBANK The grassbank at Dunn Ranch Prairie in northwest Missouri was TNC’s first in the central United States. It is a way to extend Dunn’s ecological impact and help our neighbors. Through an exchange, local ranchers can graze cattle for a few months a year on two specific pastures on Dunn in a unit that totals 400 acres. That buys the ranchers time to implement sustainable grazing practices on their own land, such as removing fescue and planting native grasses, removing shrubs and small trees, resting certain pastures and controlling cattle access near streams on their land. Dunn benefits, too. Strategically deploying the grazing cattle creates more patchiness of structure on the grassbank unit, which promotes biodiversity.

TOP TO BOTTOM: Ozark forest © Byron Jorjorian Prescribed fire © Doyle Murphy/TNC Grassbank © Kristy Stoyer/TNC

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