From Wabasha, Minnesota to Rock Island, Illinois, the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge stretches across 261 river miles and protects more than 240,000 acres of Mississippi River floodplain.
This year, the refuge celebrates 100 years. But its origins were hard fought.
In 1922, the United States Department of Agriculture set the plans in motion for a major project: to drain wetlands along 300 miles of the Upper Mississippi River.
Fortunately, a local conservation group — the Izaak Walton League of America — led a grassroots effort to stop the drainage and safeguard the land as a wildlife refuge.
“It was a huge success to protect a really large area, and if we didn't have that protection on this place, it would look a lot different now,” Kendra Pednault, manager of the refuge’s McGregor District, told Iowa Public Radio.
Scott Kovarovics — who serves as the executive director of the IWLA today — gave props to the league’s first president, Will Dilg, for spearheading the campaign.
Even back then, Kovarovics said, Dilg and his colleagues “knew the value of the marshes and the wetlands and the backwaters” and “the incredible habitat they provided.”
Despite being a regional issue, the league tapped into its national reader base — through the magazine Outdoor America — to shine a light on their campaign to save the river habitat.
“It was a phenomenon — the first conservation group with a mass membership. Although concentrated in the Midwest, practically every state was represented,” historian Stephen Fox wrote in a Winter 2001 issue of Outdoor America, an article that was recently republished for the centennial event.
The league also recruited women from the General Federation of Women’s Clubs to join them in a country-wide letter-writing campaign to Congress.
In a 1923 issue of Outdoor America, league member Cora C. Whitely pledged her support to Dilg’s campaign in a letter to the editor.
Winter wrote: “Ever since I heard of the proposal to drain the Winneshiek Bottoms — and especially since I realized that the plan is opposed by scientific experts, government officials as well as by nature-lovers and sportsmen — I have wanted to help, in some way, to put a stop to a project so fraught with evil consequences.”
Alongside the published letter, the magazine staff wrote: “The slogan of [the GFWC] is ‘the promotion of all movements looking towards the betterment of life.’ What surer betterment of life can there be than that exemplified in the preserving for all time of our priceless American outdoor heritage?”
On June 7, 1924 — after two years of grassroots campaigning — Congress passed the “Upper Mississippi River Wild Life and Fish Refuge Act.”
Today, the refuge is home to 518 distinct species: including 306 types of birds, 119 fish, 51 mammals, and 42 freshwater mussels.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the refuge is a migration corridor for millions of birds each year, including 60% of all North American birds, and 40% of all North American waterfowl.
As IWLA conservationists, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service members, and refuge employees and volunteers look ahead to the next 100 years, they are constantly looking for ways to strengthen and preserve the habitat’s rich biodiversity.
“You can get lost in the maze of islands, and there's so many places to explore,” said Billy Reiter-Marolf, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.
“I just really hope that it just doesn't get simplified and become all water with a few reed canary grass islands, because it's just such a treasure, and there's so much to learn out there.”
Header image via Brandon Jones/USFWS
