The Rainwater Basin Joint Venture (RWBJV) was created in 1992, under the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, a plan which proposed to halt and reverse the decline of waterfowl populations by protecting and restoring the habitats on which migratory birds depend. The RWBJV’s initial geographic focus was on the 150-mile-wide complex of playa wetlands in the Rainwater Basin region of south-central Nebraska, where some 8.6 million migrating ducks and geese stop over each spring.
In response to the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI), formed in 1999, the RWBJV began to expand its conservation efforts to include all bird habitats within a larger geographic region – consisting of the Nebraska portions of Bird Conservation Regions (BCRs) 11 and 19, as identified by NABCI.
