Wichita ? Mallard ducks, Canada geese and trumpeter swans in Cherokee County are dying of zinc poisoning. Songbirds suffer from ingesting lead. Aquatic life is almost nonexistent in several streams and creeks and too contaminated for consumption in some rivers.

And throughout the Tri-State Mining District that encompasses Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, large tracts of land where wastes from more than 100 years of mining were dumped are today a barren landscape more reminiscent, as one wildlife official put it, of a moonscape.

It is against this backdrop that the Kansas field office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will hold a meeting Monday in Baxter Springs to get public comment on environmental restoration options for Cherokee County. An open house begins at 9 a.m. at the Baxter Springs Community Center, with a presentation planned at 7 p.m.

Kansas is the first of the three states in this mining district to get even this far in the process. That is because the Environmental Protection Agency, the lead cleanup agency, is nearing the end of its cleanup efforts of contaminated mining-related land in Kansas, said John Miesner, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Similar efforts are just starting up in Missouri and the EPA is still evaluating contaminated sites in Oklahoma, he said.

With EPA nearing the end of its cleanup plan in Kansas, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can now move in to restore – as much as possible – the habitat for its animals and plants.

On Monday, the agency will ask for public input in deciding priorities for the $2 million it got in bankruptcy settlements from Eagle-Picher Industries, Inc. and LTV Corp., the former owners and operators of mines in Cherokee County.

“Now we can start restoring the areas that have either been impacted, and the cleanup doesn’t quite bring it all the way back, or go out and preserve some existing habitats that are disappearing,” Miesner said.