Bottomland Forests of the Lower Mississippi Valley

ACR 1074

27.9K

Acres Conserved

46

Landowner Partners

Location

Louisiana Mississippi River Delta

Methodology

IFM 2.1

Standard

ACR

Project Details

The Bottomland Forests of the Lower Mississippi Valley project is the largest, most geographically diverse and biodiverse project in NativState’s portfolio. The 46 sites span five states: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Missouri. The sites include High Conservation Value (HCV) designations spanning across the states with rare species habitat, old growth, and rare natural community types.

Each site within this project is enrolled in a sustainable forestry certification program, ensuring management practices that will sustain healthy forests and structural diversity at the site level while encouraging watershed and healthy wildlife habitat at the project level.

Conservation highlights:

The most extensively documented private land old-growth determination in the NativState portfolio. The most recent assessment designated 446 acres of Sugarberry-Elm-Ash Forest and rare Willow Oak Forest as permanent no-harvest HCV Forest. Notable individual trees in the old-growth stand include a 43-inch overcup oak, and a 51-inch sycamore.

The presence of chalk glades, which are geologically constrained to a very small portion of southwestern Arkansas, represent some of the most geographically rare natural communities in the state.

Properties adjacent to the Cache–Lower White Rivers Ramsar Wetland of International Importance are recognized as the single most important wintering area for mallard ducks in North America.

Co-occurrence of two of the most globally imperiled freshwater mussels in North America. The Ouachita Rock Pocketbook (federally Endangered) and the Louisiana Pigtoe have both been identified in the same reach of the Little River.