Earlier this July, Gathering Waters joined Mississippi Valley Conservancy for a site visit with Rep. Jenna Jacobson – current representative for Wisconsin’s 50th Assembly District and candidate for southwest Wisconsin’s 17th Senate District – to discuss the impact of the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program. The group visited two properties on opposite ends of the restoration timeline: Boscobel Bluffs State Natural Area, a 475-acre bluffland perched over the Wisconsin River with globally rare dry prairie and oak savanna, and Plum Creek Conservation Area, MVC’s largest property at 1,600+ acres of former row-crop hillside along the Kickapoo River, still being converted back to prairie and working farmland. Rep. Jacobson has been a steadfast champion for Knowles-Nelson, and we’re grateful for her support.
MVC Conservation Director Abbie Church, Restoration Ecologist Michael Reitz, and Director of Development Shane Drey led the tour, which covered steep-slope prairie restoration at Boscobel Bluffs and regenerative grazing with local ranchers at Plum Creek. Conversation with Rep. Jacobson centered around the implications of Knowles-Nelson’s lapse, and the growing pressure new data centers and energy infrastructure are putting on Wisconsin’s natural resources.
Mississippi Valley Conservancy is an accredited land trust working to conserve the bluffs, prairies, wetlands, and streams of Wisconsin’s Driftless Area. Since 1997, the Conservancy has protected more than 27,000 acres across nine counties, including over 7,000 acres open to the public for hiking, fishing, hunting, and outdoor education.
The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program has shaped much of Mississippi Valley Conservancy’s work: over the past two decades, the organization has received more than $7 million in Knowles-Nelson grants to support land purchases and restoration work across its nine-county service area, including at La Crosse Blufflands, Sugar Creek Bluff, Kickapoo Bottoms, and more than a dozen other preserves now open to the public.
While Plum Creek was funded differently (through the MVC’s largest single gift ever), its ongoing restoration relies on the same kind of long-term, hands-on stewardship that Knowles-Nelson has historically supported.
Thank you to Rep. Jacobson for taking the time to spend a morning on the land, and to Abbie, Michael, and Shane for hosting. Visits like this one help legislators see, firsthand, what Knowles-Nelson funding has made possible across the state, and what’s at stake as advocates work to see the program restored.
