Jim Edgar Panther Creek State Fish and Wildlife Area is a 16,550-acre conservation landscape in Cass County, central Illinois, managed by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Once part of the Illinois Confederacy’s territory and later heavily settled and farmed by the 1850s, the land was bought by Commonwealth Edison in 1968 for a coal-fired power plant project that was never built. Illinois acquired the property in June 1993, and in 2001 it was renamed for Governor Jim Edgar. Today the area combines open space, woodland, and production farmland, supports hunting and fishing habitat, includes the protected Cox Creek Hill Prairie State Natural Area, and was designated an Important Bird Area of Illinois in 2004.