Largest Private Campaign - Saving Wild Iowa

Largest Private Campaign - Saving Wild Iowa



Saving Wild Iowa
January 2008  - The Iowa Natural Heritage 
Foundation says it has embarked upon "the largest single private campaign" 
ever launched in the state for natural land protection. 
The goal of the new effort is to protect 15,000 acres of what's left of 
"wild Iowa," the foundation says. 
At least 7,500 acres in the Bluffs country is on the foundation's 
preservation wish list, including the Mississippi River blufflands and the 
Upper Iowa River. 

The topography of the Upper Mississippi in northeastern Iowa is rugged 
with limestone and sandstone bluffs, deeply carved valleys, numerous 
caves, sinkholes, and springs that supply productive trout streams. Many 
streams in this karst region disappear into sinkholes, flow through caves 
and reappear as springs. 
The foundation wants to safeguard about 6,000 acres in the Loess Hills of 
western Iowa as well as Iowa's northern lakes. Iowa's largest natural 
lakes stretch along1,500 acres of natural shorelines and wildlife areas, 
including the Iowa Great Lakes and Clear Lake. 
It will cost at least $40 million to accomplish those protection goals, 
says the foundation. 
The project got some recent help in the form of a $3 million grant for its 
ongoing work from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which protects 
wildlife areas around the United States. 
This campaign accomplishes part of the Upper Midwest Wildlife Habitat 
Protection Initiative, the group says, and it is intended as a supplement, 
not a replacement, for the on-going work of the Iowa Natural Heritage 
Foundation across Iowa. 
Anita O'Gara, the foundation's vice president and director of development, 
says the Duke grant requires a dollar for dollar match of 5-to-1 but the 
natural heritage foundation wants to raise a 9-to-1 match in Iowa. 
Partners include Ducks Unlimited, the Conservation Fund and five land 
trusts involved with the Bluffs Alliance. 

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