History
History of the Western Wildlife Corridor
We were founded in May 1992 by a group of visionary individuals who saw the forested hillsides of the Ohio River valley as a unique resource that should be protected. They decided to found an organization dedicated to the preservation of an area they loved, the Ohio River valley from the Mill Creek to the Indiana state line. In September 1993, we became an official non-profit organization with a Board of Trustees and IRS 501 C3 status.
In 1996 we obtained our first major preserve through a donation of a 13.4 acre tract extending from the Delshire community in Delhi Township to Hillside Avenue in Cincinnati. This area known as the Delshire Preserve, has extensive old-growth forest and is a lush green paradise covered with wildflowers in the spring. Other smaller properties were acquired in the late 1990s and early 2000’s in Delhi Township, Cincinnati and the Village of Addyston .
Then in 2001, the first property was purchased, 8.5 acres of forested hillside on Enright Ave. in Price Hill. This was subsequently sold to our sister organization, Imago, and has become part of their Earth Center Preserve.
The leaders of Western Wildlife Corridor at this point came to the realization that legally protecting land so that it couldn’t be developed was not enough. The vitality of land as a haven for plants and wildlife and as a source of enjoyment for people also depends on the diversity of species there. The biggest threat to this diversity is the invasion of alien plants. In the forests that we own and/ or manage, Amur Honeysuckle, Garlic Mustard and Winter Creeper are the most common of these aliens. When these move into a property in large numbers, they shade out every other plant except the large trees, so that they cannot survive. Over time, since small saplings will not survive, the climax vegetation will consist only of alien plants. We thus began an aggressive program to eliminate invasive alien plants in the properties they owned and managed. Early efforts concentrated on the Delshire and Turkey Haven Preserves and resulted in the removal of almost all the aliens there.
Almost 30 years later, we remain a mostly volunteer-run organization The habitat restoration efforts have expanded, converting large areas of our properties and the properties of our partners into beautiful natural nature preserves and we have become a vital force for the protection of the beautiful forested hillsides in the Ohio River Valley.
