Energy providers are making major new investments in infrastructure to meet growing American demand. The Rockies Express Pipeline (REX) is a prime example. This 1,700-mile pipeline now stretches from Colorado to Ohio. By length and volume, REX is one of North America’s largest natural gas pipelines. Despite careful planning to minimize its impact, this expansive construction project affected vulnerable migratory bird habitat across a 639-mile pipeline section called REX East.

To compensate for the loss of interior forest and secure a construction permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Rockies Express LLC — a business owned by Kinder Morgan, Sempra and Conoco Phillips — agreed to establish a mitigation fund managed by an independent and trusted conservation partner.

The Conservation Solution

Through mitigation funding provided by Rockies Express LLC to offset the unavoidable impacts of the pipeline expansion, The Conservation Fund established the Rockies Express Migratory Bird Account — a one-time $4-million fund to support projects that conserve forestland across Missouri, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio.

Outcome Highlights

Conservation

As the fund manager, we evaluated and provided grants to conservation projects, preserving forest habitat and riparian corridors for vulnerable bird species in America’s heartland with impressive results. A total of 14 grants were made to land trusts, local municipalities and state agencies with more than 17,300 acres protected and restored — four times more than the 3,721 acres REX was required to mitigate. An additional $19 million in funding was brought in from other sources for these projects. As a result, TCF was able to help public and private partners establish the 12,000-acre Vinton Furnace State Experimental Forest in Ohio and the Copperhead Hollow State Wildlife Area in Illinois. In addition, cerulean warblers, hooded warblers, worm-eating warblers, Kentucky warblers, Bewick’s wrens and other forest-dwelling avian species were given permanent space to rest their wings.

Economic

We expedited permitting to complete the project, bringing 1.8-billion cubic feet of natural gas to a waiting market each day.

Copperhead Hollow State Wildlife Area Project

One grant from the REX project helped provide matching funds to existing financial support from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the National Wild Turkey Federation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect more than 210 acres of oak-hickory woodlands adjacent to the DNR’s Copperhead Hollow State Wildlife Area. The property had been a high priority for preservation and its purchase complements broader efforts to protect and restore forests along the bluffs of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers — a significant migration corridor for a variety of sensitive species. By providing landscape-scale conservation along this critical migratory route, warblers, wood thrushes and whip-poor-wills migrating through Illinois gained more room to stretch their wings.