A Celebration of the Upper Mississippi's Floodplains
These floodplains - free from levee infrastructure - support abundant wildlife.
Last weekend was the 100th year celebration of the formation of the Upper Mississippi Wildlife Refuge. This sprawling scenic area of 240,000 acres of federally protected land along the Mississippi from Wabasha, MN to Rock Island, IL contains important bird habitat. This celebration was an acknowledgement of the foresight that worked to protect these River’s floodplains from being cut off and permanently destroyed by a strong desire at the time to drain and construct levees along the River’s banks. This act of preserving the floodplains in the “upper” or northern section of the Mississippi makes it much different from its southern half - much more wilder or natural because it is not so controlled by man-made infrastructure.
If you are interested in environmental history, the story of this 1924 conservation decision centers around the work of Will Dilg - a co-founder of the Isaac Walton League - who stopped a plan to drain the Winneshiek Bottoms near the Wisconsin-Iowa border. He then went on to lobby President Harding and the Congress to purchase land along the River for a national preserve. In his article titled “The Drainage Crime of the Century”, Dilg empathically states:
In truth, here mother nature has set down the greatest natural hatchery for game fishes in the whole world and it runs without cost to the States along the river or to the National Government…..This region, covering more than three hundred miles, is no less important to the hunter than it is to the fisherman, because here the Supreme Creator of the Universe has made these river lands a paradise for wild waterfowl of ever species….And when these river bottoms are once drained THEY ARE GONE FOREVER.
Eleven months after this written plea, in June of 1924, Congress created this refuge on the upper Mississippi. Using hindsight to look back, this has to be one of the most impactful conservation decisions of this region. Building levees on this section would have only exasperated flooding downstream. Today, more productive farmland is abundant throughout the states of Minnesota and Iowa. Trying to create farmland in the tight alluvial plains by the River back then would have been very inefficient with the river bluffs on both sides creating a border to having large farms. The trade-off of resources would have be a net negative and a disaster for the natural world if these floodplains had been drained. Instead these backwaters have become important bird migrations spots supporting 70% of the canvasback population and hundreds of thousands of tundra swans on their autumn migrations. And now that these lands are federally protected, they are open and available to all citizens as their own land to recreate on and enjoy.
A quick overview of this important Wildlife Refuge:
More than 290 species of birds migrate throughout the refuge every year. About 40% of the waterfowl in the nation use the Mississippi River as a travel corridor in the fall migration and the refuge is particularly known to host large flocks of tundra swans and large rafts of canvasback ducks between mid-October and the winter freeze-up. In addition, Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge hosts more than 300 pairs of bald eagles, in part due to having one of the largest blocks of floodplain forest habitat in the lower 48 states.
Infrastructure in the upper Mississippi does exist with the Army Corps of Engineers system of locks and dams but that is designed for navigational purposes not for flood control. Actually having these natural backwaters helps the Army Corps with managing the system of navigational dams as it gives the water a safe place to go in high rain events. Besides flood control, healthy floodplains improve water quality, recharge aquifers and provide undisturbed wildlife habitat. This is a great example of how proper resource conservation can provide immense benefits without significant costs.
So cheers to a great conservation movement that continues to provide countless natural gifts one hundred years later!
