The Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Natural Areas Program stewards more than 12,500 acres in northern Ohio—and those protected areas continue to grow.
The Museum recently finalized the purchase of the 25.4795-acre Ruez tract at the Museum's Grand River Terraces Preserve in Ashtabula County. This strategic land purchase will protect important buffer forest habitat adjacent to the existing Steiner old-growth forest section of the Grand River Terraces Preserve, and will increase the Museum’s conservation holdings at this preserve from 1,063 acres to 1,089 acres.
The Steiner Forest is one of the top three most mature old-growth forests in Ashtabula County, with numerous trees measuring 110 feet or taller. While the forest on the new Ruez tract is not an older-growth forest, protecting this site will prevent logging in the future, and will ensure that the Steiner Forest is adequately buffered by forest land on its east side in perpetuity.
The new Ruez tract contains more than 700 feet of frontage on Bronson Creek, a high-quality tributary of the Grand River. Riffle habitat (the section of a stream where shallow, fast-moving water flows over rocks) can be found in the Grand River at the mouth of Bronson Creek. This habitat supports 11 different species of freshwater mussels, including the federally threatened round hickorynut mussel (pictured below). The protection of floodplain habitat along Bronson Creek upstream from this riffle will help secure the long-term viability of this important freshwater mussel population.
Juvenile round hickorynut, Andrew Phipps/USFWS, Public Domain
The acquisition of the Ruez tract was completely funded with a federal grant from the North American Wetlands Conservation Act Fund (NAWCA). The property has been a high-priority conservation target for many years, and when it was suddenly listed for sale two years ago, the Museum partnered with the West Creek Conservancy to find a conservation buyer to purchase and hold the property while the Museum raised the money to purchase it.
Curious to learn more about the Museum’s natural areas? Read about our work to protect the broad range of habitats and ecosystems found in northern Ohio—including hardwood forest, fossil dune ridge, marsh, swamp, glacial wetlands, and many others. And if you’re interested in learning more about Ohio’s watersheds and the populations they support, stop by the Museum’s Larry Sears and Sally Zlotnick Sears Dynamic Earth Wing, where you can also see examples of some of the mussels found in the Grand River.
