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Monsanto Facility Receives Special Recognition for Wildlife Habitat Efforts
Performance Track and the Wildlife Habitat Council
The Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) is one of Performance Track's 22 Network Partners. Under this partnership, WHC helps promote Performance Track to its membership and EPA helps raise awareness of WHC among Performance Track members.
WHC engages the business and private sectors as one team for the recovery, development, and preservation of wildlife habitat worldwide and is shifting the paradigm on how society deals with habitat and environmental issues. Its programs bring conservation and community groups, government, and corporations together on common goals based on wildlife habitat concerns.
More information about Performance Track and the Wildlife Habitat Council is available here.
See the Wildlife Habitat Council's official press release for more information 
.
Performance Track and the Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) have selected the Monsanto Company's facility in Muscatine, Iowa for a special commendation to recognize its outstanding achievements in environmental management and wildlife habitat restoration. The facility has set challenging environmental goals, demonstrated a strong commitment to public outreach, and undertaken a number of ambitious habitat restoration and improvement projects.
"We are honored to receive this joint recognition of our efforts from EPA and WHC," says Susie Hidalgo, the plant's environmental safety and health area leader. "Our employees work diligently to ensure environmental excellence in our operations and to maintain our value and reputation in the community. We are proud of our accomplishments and we appreciate the official commendation to recognize the creative spirit of our employees"
EPA and WHC will formally recognize Monsanto on November 16, 2004, in conjunction with a joint technical workshop that will take place the following day, November 17, at WHC's 16th Annual Symposium in Baltimore, Maryland. The workshop will also feature presentations from Bridgestone-Firestone and Pfizer, both of which have Performance Track facilities with WHC-certified habitats.
The Muscatine plant is surrounded by habitat protection areas: the 510-acre Big Sand Mound Preserve (owned and managed jointly by Monsanto and MidAmerican Energy Company, Iowa's largest utility), and a 200-acre sand prairie restoration site that includes a 1-acre butterfly garden.
The Big Sand Mound Preserve contains sand dunes and dry sand prairies that provide habitat for a number of plant and animal species that are rare or threatened in the state, such as the prickly pear cactus, the western hognose snake, and the Illinois mud turtle. Monsanto and MidAmerican Energy have established an ecological advisory committee to oversee management of the preserve, including resource management, research, education, and controlled access to the public. The companies offer educational tours to students and other groups, and open the preserve to the public every other year for a field day. The preserve is a certified Wildlife Habitat Council site.
Monsanto began creating the sand prairie restoration area in 1993, planting 65 acres with native grasses and wildflowers, and later expanding the site to 200 acres. The butterfly garden was planted in 1998.
The diverse ecosystem of the nature preserve offers educational opportunities to all ages. Many school groups plan their annual field day to include the nature preserve and Monsanto's prairie restoration area. The biennial Big Sand Mound Field Day includes walking tours and presentations to the public on the preserve's natural and human history. More than 600 students and neighbors have visited the site over the past two years.
Monsanto's Muscatine facility also earns high marks as an environmental performer in its own operations. In addition to being accepted into Performance Track as a charter member in 2000, the plant received two environmental excellence awards in 2003 from Iowa's governor and an American Chemical Council Energy Efficiency Award. The facility has set aggressive environmental performance goals and made exceptional progress toward meeting them during its first three years in Performance Track, reducing its total energy use per pound of product by 62 percent since the year 2000, water use per pound of product by 47 percent, and total solid waste per pound of product by nearly 80 percent. It cut discharges to water (in terms of biological oxygen demand) by 97 percent.
Since 1991, the Muscatine plant has had an advisory panel consisting of community volunteers who meet quarterly to advise and guide the plant manager on issues that the plant needs to address. The plant also formed a community relations committee in 1997, a group of plant employees who voluntarily serve to help the plant in public outreach.
Monsanto has done "marvelous work" in its wildlife habitat, community outreach, and environmental management efforts, says EPA Region 7 Performance Track Coordinator Chet McLaughlin. "They are class participants."