William Faulkner was among those who wrote about the majestic Big Woods of the Mississippi River Delta. The forest once stretched down both sides of the river, covering parts of Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri.
When Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto arrived in the region during the 1500s, the Big Woods made up the largest expanse of forested wetlands in North America. There were 24 million acres in the Big Woods back then. Today, there are fewer than 5 million acres remaining.
Starting in the 1800s, the land was cleared of trees, drained and converted to row-crop agriculture. Since the 1930s, meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has eliminated 16 curves in the Mississippi River, shortening the stream by almost 150 miles. There are locks and dams on the river's major tributaries. The tributaries also have been straightened and channelized. There are dikes, levees, giant pumps and diversion canals.
Of the remaining 5 million acres of forested land, about 1 million acres are in Arkansas. The Big Woods of Arkansas are an international treasure. In 1989, east Arkansas' bottomland hardwood forests were recognized by the 49 countries of the United Nations' Ramsar Convention as a Wetland of International Importance.
A stretch of 550,000 forested acres in east Arkansas is the biggest corridor of bottomland hardwoods remaining north of the Atchafalaya River in south Louisiana. The Nature Conservancy sums up the situation this way: "As forests continue to be broken into smaller fragments by roads, ditches, urban development and gravel mines, the number of plants and animals that can survive in those patches decreases. Water quality also declines as sediments, fertilizers and pesticides wash off cultivated fields with no streamside forest to trap and filter them. The rivers of the Mississippi River Delta and the Big Woods are vital to the health of their surrounding forests. Without naturally functioning rivers, the ecosystem changes dramatically. The forests are no longer wetlands.
"Dams, levees and irrigation projects along the Mississippi River have virtually eliminated flooding along the river's main stem, and tributary flooding has been reduced by 90 percent. Unable to disperse among the forests, water runs faster and stronger in straightened river channels, thus accelerating erosion. As riverbanks erode, forest vegetation loses its foothold and is swallowed by the river. Ultimately, the forest is cut off from the river entirely by steep riverbanks, and the risk of devastating floods downstream increases. Additionally, steeper riverbanks and structures such as levees isolate trees from the life-giving power of the rivers."
The Big Woods received positive news earlier this year when Congress approved the landmark Great American Outdoors Act. The act will provide $9.5 billion during the next five years to help clear up the maintenance backlog on federal property. Those federal lands include several national wildlife refuges in east Arkansas--White River, Cache River, Bald Knob, Wapanocca and Big Lake--that protect parts of the Big Woods. The St. Francis National Forest also stands to benefit.
When soybean prices soared from time to time during the 1960s and 1970s, tens of thousands of acres of land were drained in east Arkansas. In addition to the federal government's establishment and expansion of national wildlife refuges to slow that trend, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission played a role through wildlife management areas such as Dagmar, Black Swamp and Wattensaw.
There also are natural areas overseen by the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission and land controlled by the Nature Conservancy. The conservancy joined forces years ago with Audubon Arkansas, the AGFC, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other entities to form the Big Woods Conservation Partnership. A birding opportunities website was established, and maps were published to show hiking trails and canoe access points.
The conservation efforts of the past five decades have been admirable, and the Great American Outdoors Act should allow continued progress. Long before the reported spotting of an ivory-billed woodpecker in the Big Woods, conservationists were hard at work there.
"Arkansans are fortunate," the Nature Conservancy's Nancy DeLamar wrote in Arkansas Business back in 1994. "Our wetland-rich state still has a substantial amount of floodplain forest intact. Wildlife management areas and refuges exist in the Big Woods as well as several large tracts of sustainably managed, privately held forested land. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are planting hardwoods. ... The conservancy and other private landowners and companies are also planting native hardwoods in the bottomland--whether the trees are for a natural wildlife habitat, future duck hunting, timber harvesting or 'I just like to see these trees grow' philosophy."
The efforts to restore bottomland hardwood forests in the Delta received an additional boost when the Walton Family Foundation got involved.
Some of the wildest, most remote areas of the Big Woods can be found in the White River National Wildlife Refuge, which was established in 1935 for the protection of migratory birds. The refuge is three to 20 miles wide and almost 90 miles long. There are more than 300 natural lakes and potholes in the refuge along with dozens of slow-running streams, sloughs and bayous. Faulkner would have liked it.
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Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.