Mixed Broadleaf Forests of the Ozark Highlands

The Mixed Broadleaf Forests of the Ozark Highlands, located in Arkansas and Missouri, tells a story of conserving endangered species and restoration of imperiled landscapes. This project includes approximately 2,350 acres of High Conservation Value (HCV) area, which is the largest of any single project in NativState’s portfolio, and roughly 45% of the portfolio total.

Conservation Highlights

Glades
Glades are open, bedrock-controlled communities with a distinctive flora. They are in documented decline from fire suppression and eastern red cedar encroachment. Rare glade communities, including sandstone glades in the Arkansas Ozarks and dolomite glades in both Arkansas and Missouri, make up about 958 acres of the total HCV acres within this project. These glades are being actively managed for recovery, resulting in habitat restoration for the unique species that thrive there.

Endangered bats
This project includes a protected gray bat roost cave on private working timberland, with a quarter-mile protection zone around the entrance. This is currently the only designated federally endangered bat roost in NativState’s portfolio.

Threatened mussel
894 acres in Monroe and Arkansas Counties include HCV 1 for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service final designated critical habitat for the Rabbitsfoot mussel along the tract’s White River frontage (17.61 acres).

HCV 2 forest areas containing globally, regionally or nationally significant large landscape‑level forests where viable populations of most or all naturally occurring species exist in natural patterns of distribution and abundance. 

• In Arkansas and Monroe Counties, an 881.14-acre bottomland-hardwood block bounded on three sides by the Dale Bumpers White River National Wildlife Refuge — roughly 160,000 acres – is one of the largest remaining bottomland-hardwood complexes in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, and part of the Cache–Lower White Rivers Ramsar Wetland of International Importance.
• A 336.76-acre tract within this project meets HCV 2 classification on the same basis and shares three of its boundaries with the Dale Bumpers White River National Wildlife Refuge.