A big river runs through Jefferson City and Columbia! How much do you really know about about birds, wildlife, and habitat near the Missouri River?

      Learn more at 7 p.m. on Thursday May 10 at Runge Conservation Nature Center when Jim Loveless, the manager of Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area, will present "Returning Nature to the River". His program is about the historical Missouri river, changes over the past 150 years and recent efforts to restore fish and habitats.

      Jim Loveless is a wildlife management biologist with the Missouri conservation department and has been the manager of the Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area since it was purchased. When not building canoes, he enjoys fishing and bird hunting.

      Wetlands, marshes, swamps and fens formerly made up more than one-tenth of Missouri's landscape, Loveless says. Many were created by natural spring and fall flooding of rivers and streams, which left behind sheets of nutrient-filled water on the rich bottomland soils.

      Acre for acre, wetlands support more animal and plant life than most any other kind of ecosystem. Ducks, geese and other migratory birds found abundant food when traveling these riverways on their spring and fall migrations.

      In 1989 the Department of Conservation embarked on perhaps the most innovative wetlands restoration project in the world. Now the Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area combines recycled wastewater with river water to create wetland conditions that used to be widespread in Missouri, conditions that supported a wealth of plants and wildlife.

       Someday, Loveless says, the Conservation Department may build a spur of the Katy Trail that takes hikers and bicyclists through the high woods

and prairies. Since the view up there overlooks 13 miles of river bottomland and bluffs, an observation platform may be in the area's future.

      Observers could trace former river channels in the bottomland which still contains the remains of the steamboat called Plowboy. The thousands of birds passing along the Missouri River during spring and fall migrations make for a spectacular view.

      One could almost imagine how this river valley might have looked 150 years ago. The River Bluffs Audubon Society program, “Returning Nature to the River”, will help us create a clearer vision so join us for this  presentation and stay afterward for a brief business meeting.