WEBSTER CITY — Farmers, landowners and citizens are invited to a special meeting to learn how farmers and biologists are working together to restore fish habitat in the Boone River Watershed and hear how they can get involved. The public meeting will be held at the Kendall Young Library in Webster City at 5 p.m., on June 27.

The Boone River Watershed, a Mississippi River Basin Initiative watershed and a priority watershed of the Fishers and Farmers Partnership for the Upper Mississippi River Basin, was recently selected by the National Fish Habitat Partnership as one of 2012’s “10 Waters to Watch.”

These are rivers, streams, estuaries, watershed systems, shores and lakes recognized by NFHP as benefiting from strategic conservation efforts to protect, restore or enhance their current condition.

Partnership speakers at the event will include Martin Konrad with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Eileen Bader of The Nature Conservancy of Iowa, and Chris Jones from the Iowa Soybean Association. Their presentations will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

Fishers and Farmers partners, which include TNC, Iowa DNR, ISA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Hamilton and Wright Soil and Water Conservation Districts and Iowa State University, work together with landowners to restore oxbow habitat critical to fish species, especially the federally listed Topeka shiner.

Restored oxbows provide a natural hydrology by connecting streams with their floodplains, help hold sediment, provide filters to improve water quality and provide habitat for aquatic invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians, mammals and birds.