Apex Clean Energy Partners With Ducks Unlimited For West Central IL Conservation Effort

By Benjamin Cox on June 24, 2021 at 5:38pm

Apex Clean Energy is providing a conservation grant, in support of the Lincoln Land Wind Project, to a land conservation initiative centered almost 80 miles away from the center of the wind project.

Apex has contributed its first Conservation Grant of $300,000 to Ducks Unlimited for a project to improve more than 330 acres of habitat at Two Rivers National Wildlife Refuge, a migratory bird refuge in parts of Calhoun, Jersey, and Greene counties in Illinois and portions of St. Charles County, Missouri.

The Ducks Unlimited project’s two objectives will restore 324 acres of forested, emergent wetlands within the floodplain and implement nearly 20 acres of Timber Stand Improvements to boost forest quality for bats and other wildlife species.

Flood-prone, former agricultural fields will be restored to seasonal wetlands and the Timber Stand Improvements aims to preserve mature, healthy trees on-site, retain dead trees for habitat, create quarter-acre bat-foraging openings in the forest, and reforest traditional hardwood species.