Prairie Rivers Network is one of the Friends of Big Bureau Creek Watershed. This multi-stakeholder group is devoted to reducing sediment and nutrient pollution in Big Bureau Creek and its tributaries in north-central Illinois. The Friends consists of government agencies, non-profit organizations, and businesses working together to increase conservation on farmland in the highly agricultural watershed.
The Friends came together in 2010 in response to a call for proposals from USDA’s Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative. This new Initiative is an effort by USDA to reduce the size of the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone by curbing nutrient pollution from states that border and drain into the Mississippi River. The Initiative is popular among conservationists because funding is targeted to specific areas to solve specific problems.
The Friends’ proposal was funded by USDA in June 2011, with all of the government funding going toward farmers for conservation practice installation and water quality monitoring. The Friends are providing some of their own funding as match, to increase the resources available for conservation. Prairie Rivers Network contributes to the project by providing three outreach workers to work with landowners to enroll in USDA conservation programs. We also contracted with the U.S. Geological Survey to conduct some of the stream surveys and sampling.
Conservation practices such as reduced tillage, cover crops, and grassed waterways not only help clean up local streams, but also improve farm productivity. These are farm-specific solutions that balance conservation with production. Provided that funding remains intact for the Initiative, the Big Bureau Creek Watershed project should continue through at least 2014. We hope that by the end of the project, some 5% of farmers will be enrolled in government conservation programs, compared to the less than 1% at present.
