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New
Season of Peoria Audubon Membership Meetings:
"Update
on the Mississippi River Restoration"
Wednesday, Sept. 10,
2008 @ 7:00 pm at Forest Park Nature Center

Brad Walker, River Restoration Coordinator, for
the Prairie Rivers
Network, will provide an update on Mississippi River
restoration. Their mission is to protect the rivers and
streams of Illinois and to promote the lasting health and beauty of
watershed communities.
The Prairie Rivers Network engages citizens and
organizations in this effort, providing them the information, sound
science, and technical assistance they need to get involved, press
for better enforcement of the Clean Water Act, and educate their
local policy makers about the importance of clean water in their
communities.
"The Mississippi River
continues to flow to the Gulf of Mexico despite the many
dams we have placed in its path. Occasionally it reminds
us, regardless of the hundreds of miles of levees
protecting our developments built in floodplain areas,
that it is simply tolerating us.
However, our obsession with
river management has taken a toll on the river
ecosystems. These systems have been in decline since the
completion of the major dams and levees and are
generally continuing to decline even though we have
spent hundreds of millions of dollars on restoration
efforts over two decades.
The primary reason for the
construction of the dams, southward barge shipment of
grains, has generally been flat or declining over the
last couple of decades. Despite this trend, the US Army
Corps of Engineers’ continuously projects significant
future increases in barge traffic and is pushing a
major, expensive expansion of the lock system."
According to Brad, "I will be discussing the
general condition of the river environment, with a bit of a history
and background refresher, as well as the benefits of a large-scale
restoration effort. Also included will be an update of the Corps’
lock expansion and ecosystem restoration project, known as the
Navigation and Ecological Sustainability Program or NESP, which was
included in the 2007 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA)."
Come 10 minutes early (6:50 PM) for Special
Book Sale
Event at
Forest Park Nature Center. Maury Brucker will be bringing
four select boxes of books and
references for sale. Maury will bring books that
relate to:
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General Birding
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Birding in all of the Americas (North,
Central & South) including Hawaii
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Birding in Australia with New
Zealand and New Guinea.
Note
that these represent four of the seven boxes
of books that the family
of the late Louise Augustine donated. 100% of the proceeds
will go
to the Peoria Audubon Bird Sanctuary Fund to establish a
local birding habitat.
Click Here
for list (pdf) of
all remaining unsold books (Updated Sept.
4, 2008)
Be sure to
come early
Please join us Wed. Sept. 10 at 7:00 PM for this very special event;
held at FPNC.
Public is Always
Welcome
Meetings are
free and open to the public

Monthly
meetings of Peoria Audubon Society are held at
Forest Park
Nature Center in Peoria Heights.
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