Ron Nassar
Project Leader
2524 South
Frontage Road
Suite C
Vicksburg,
MS 39180-5269
(601) 629-6602
FAX: (601) 636-9541
E-mail: rw4_fr_lmrcc@fws.gov
Fact
Sheet
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Station
Facts
- Established: 1994.
- Number of staff: one.
- Geographic area covered:
Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee.
- Annual budget: FY06 $170,000.
Station Goals
- Provide a permanent forum
for facilitating management of the aquatic natural resources of the
Lower Mississippi River leveed floodplain.
- Restore and enhance aquatic
habitat in the Lower Mississippi River leveed floodplain and tributaries.
- Increase public awareness
and encourage sustainable use of the Lower Mississippi River's
natural resources.
- Promote natural resource-based
economic development.
- Increase technical knowledge
of the Lower Mississippi River’s natural resources.
Services provided to:
- Project leader serves as
coordinator for the Lower Mississippi River Conservation Committee
(LMRCC); LMRCC is an organization of twelve State conservation and
environmental quality agencies charged with natural resource management
in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley; cooperators include
Federal/state agencies, private entities, industry and grant-making
organizations.
- Public.
- U. S. Army Corps of Engineers,
Environmental Protection Agency.
- Conservation organizations.
Activity Highlights
- Development of an Aquatic
Resource Management Plan to restore natural resources in the 2.7 million-acre,
leveed floodplain of the Lower Mississippi River.
- Publication of the LMRCC
Newsletter, a regional newsletter on aquatic resource conservation,
management issues and national resource-based economic development.
- Provide long-term economic,
environmental, and public recreation benefits to the region by cooperatively
addressing aquatic resource management issues.
Questions and Answers
What does your office do?
The Lower Mississippi
River Fisheries Coordination Office (FCO) coordinates the work of many
different state and Federal natural resource management and environmental
quality agencies that deal with the Lower Mississippi River
aquatic resource issues.
Why is the Lower Mississippi
River important?
The Mississippi River is the third longest river in the world,
flowing for more than 2,350 miles from its headwaters in Lake Itasca,
Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Its 1.2 million square mile watershed
includes about 41 percent of the continental United States and a small
area of Canada.
Of the world’s rivers, the Mississippi River has the fourth largest
drainage basin, produces the seventh highest average discharge, and
is generally accepted as one of the rarest and most complex riverine
ecosystems. More than one billion tons of commodities, including more
than 50 percent of the nation’s grain production, are moved annually
on the Mississippi River.
The Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, comprised of portions of Illinois,
Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana,
stretches for 954 river miles south from the confluence of the Ohio
and Mississippi Rivers near Cairo, Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico.
At its mouth, the Mississippi River nourishes 4.5-million acres of
coastal prairies and marshes, which are an ecological extension of
the forested alluvial valley. Together they form a wetland complex
of unrivaled scope in the temperate zone of the western hemisphere.
Unlike the 1,380 mile reach of the Upper Mississippi River which is
constrained by 29 locks and dams, the Lower Mississippi River is free
flowing.
Historically the Lower Mississippi River overflowed onto a 30-125
mile wide alluvial valley and, along with its tributaries, encompassed
the largest floodplain fishery in North America. Because the river
was continually creating and abandoning channels in its 15-30 mile
wide meander belt, the area was interspersed with permanent and seasonal
wetlands. These wetlands flooded shallowly for extended periods almost
annually, and there was a great diversity of aquatic habitat types.
More than 150 species of fishes were present.
What is the Lower Mississippi
River Conservation Committee?
National recognition
of the sustainable environmental, social, and economic values of natural
resources has stimulated significant interest in the multiple-use management
of large rivers. The Lower Mississippi River Conservation Committee
was formed in 1994 by representatives of the natural resource conservation
and environmental quality agencies in the states of Arkansas, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Louisiana.
Significant assistance in the committee’s formation was provided
by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection
Agency. Formation of the organization was precipitated by the increasing
concerns of natural resource managers regarding the cumulative losses
and decreasing diversity of aquatic habitat as well as the declining
fisheries resources in the Lower Mississippi River leveed floodplain.
A full-time coordinator
assigned to the LMRCC by the FWS reports directly to the Executive
Committee. His primary duties include assisting the Chairman and
11 person Executive Committee in providing a permanent forum for
facilitating cooperative activities to restore of the
natural resources of the Lower Mississippi River, and natural resource-based
economic development.
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