Illinois WRP Wetlands Reserve Program and Success Stories

• Illinois Wetlands Reserve Program

Wetland Restoration in Cache River Watershed Success Story

Visit the Cache, and you can easily forget that you are actually in Illinois. The Cache River Basin is located at the junction of four physiographic provinces, an environmental rarity which makes the area a melting pot for flora and fauna.  The watershed’s terrain consists of hills and valleys dotted in several areas with sinkholes and intermittent streams which drain into the Cache River.  The river basin varies from strikingly beautiful bluffs in the north to primordial swamps in the south. 

These swamps host impenetrable thickets of swamp holly and buttonbush that eventually give way to a layer of duckweed, which deceptively blankets the water’s surface.  The largest cypress trees in the Cache are over 1,000 years old, reaching heights of 95 feet with a trunk diameter up to 31 feet. These giants surround themselves with cypress knees, where swamp rose takes hold and the bird-voiced treefrog sings. This is a magical haven for rare and endangered plant and animal species tucked unexpectedly at the southern tip of a state known for its millions of acres of flat corn and soybean fields!

Threats to the Cache

Originally, the Cache River flowed from the uplands of Union County southeasterly through Johnson County, then southwesterly through Pulaski and Alexander Counties where it merged with the Ohio River near Mound City, Illinois.  Since the early 1900’s, attempts to control flooding and drain wetlands have modified much of the original drainage pattern of the Cache River.  The vast majority of the present river has been channelized, dredged, diverted and leveed.  Today, only 9 percent of the pre-settlement wetlands exist.  This beautiful and environmentally critical natural landscape once spread over 5 million acres in a variety of locations in southern Illinois.  Today, the swamps of the Cache River Basin encompass an area of only 472,800 acres.

These remaining wetlands support a variety of threatened and endangered plant and animal species.  However, degradation of habitat due to erosion, sedimentation, and gully formation has compromised many species of flora and fauna.

Because of the area’s biodiversity, many of the wetlands within the Cache River watershed are unique and nationally important biological resources.   In 1994, the Ramsar Convention of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) designated the Cache River Wetlands as one of only 15 “Wetlands with International Importance” in the world.  This designation puts the Cache River wetlands into the same class as better known U.S. wetlands, such as the Florida Everglades.

WRP in the Cache River Watershed

Local landowners, together with a multi-disciplined partnership, set out to reverse the trend of wetland loss and to restore the wetlands of the Cache River watershed.   This partnership was formed in 1995 and includes the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and the Friends of the Cache, a locally-led resource planning group.

While some private landowners worked to put conservation practices upland from the Cache wetlands, others enrolled bottomland, marginal cropland into permanent and thirty-year easements through NRCS’ Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP).  With WRP, landowners retire marginal and frequently flooded cropland in return for a payment equal to the land’s appraised value. 

To date, NRCS has spent almost $8 million to acquire WRP easements in the Cache River watershed.  NRCS plans and designs the restorations with input from the various partners.  In most cases NRCS also funds the restorations, but because of this unique partnership, IDNR funded the Cache wetland restorations.  In all, 39 different landowners have restored approximately 9,000 acres through WRP.  Linked with publicly owned wetlands and preserves, this massive restoration has formed a large contiguous wetland habitat across the southern tip of Illinois. 

The Results

Wildlife responded to wetland restoration efforts almost immediately.   The majority of threatened and endangered species require a variety of wetland habitats during their life cycle, and the Cache River WRP projects provide a large area of uninterrupted habitat.  This rarity is saving many species of flora and fauna.  Migratory water birds now flock to the Cache wetlands.  The state threatened river otter has been sighted on several different easements.  As wildlife habitats improve, an increase in recreation in the watershed is anticipated with a focus on sightseeing, nature study, birding, canoeing, and scientific and educational use.

Watershed restoration efforts in the Cache River Basin have begun to reduce erosion and sedimentation, maintain and improve water quality, mitigate flooding, and preserve and enhance natural resources.  Efforts in the Cache are also restoring the original hydrology of the area on a large scale, and plans are in the works to restore small creeks in the watershed to their original channels.

With a little help from WRP, NRCS, and our conservation partners, private landowners in the Cache River watershed are empowered to preserve this special part of the world while increasing their economic opportunities and ensuring a high quality of life for future generations.   

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