Beaver Island Restoration Project Completed to Protect Mississippi River Wildlife and Habitat

CLINTON, Iowa (KWQC) – Beaver Island, a restoration project for the Mississippi River, was completed today. The partners involved had a ribbon-cutting celebration in Clinton, IA.

The project aims to increase the diversity of fish, trees, and mussels and restore and protect forests, water bodies, and wildlife.

“We’re fortunate to live on the Mississippi River, and sometimes it’s hard to remember how fortunate we are. This is an area that people look at across the world as a place to be and a really important area for birds to migrate through and for fish to flourish. We have multiple species that come through this area, and the more diverse species you have, the more likely you are to continue into the future. For this project, making sure that we get those conditions right for birds, fish, trees, and all of the threatened and endangered species is important so that we’ll still have these wonderful wild areas for millennia to come,” said Kara Mitvalsky, Project Engineer U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Rock Island District.

The 25.3 million dollar project included rehabilitating and improving 1,500 acres of floodplain and 178 acres of aquatic habitat.

According to FEMA, floodplains provide flood risk reduction benefits by slowing runoff and storing floodwater.

“The Upper Mississippi River Restoration program is great public awareness. Many folks probably don’t know the restoration going on here, but once we do these projects, we want to ensure that they are protected for as long as possible”, said Ed Britton, District Manager, Savanna, IL District U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“A part of the closing structure we put along the Beaver Channel is to keep the main river channel sedimenting going in the backwaters. A tremendous amount of sediment comes down the River each year, particularly with extreme floods. A lot of what we are doing is protection and thinking about the future to last as long as possible”, Britton added.

EPA states that aquatic habitats such as wetlands and backwaters benefit fish, allowing them to lay their eggs, grow up, and find shelter in the winter. Migratory birds benefit from these water bodies for food and rest.

“Diversity of habitat attracts different types of wildlife, and the deeper levels of water create a more diverse water system, so you have more fish. Even part of it was small rock along the bank for mussels”, Ed Britton, District Manager, Savanna, IL District USFWS.

The Project Partners are the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

Projects like this can help with flooding and common droughts in our area.

“We now have so many extremes: extreme flooding, followed by extreme drought. Trying to address all of those issues is very hard. The River does what it wants, but this program is critical to restore it and make it a healthy river system”, Britton concluded.

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