A Correction: The Genesis of Riverlands

“I noticed with some anxiety inaccuracies with your earlier postings.
I stumbled across this one when searching for new images on the least tern nesting project.
“Your statement that suggests the sanctuary was the result of mitigation is wholly wrong.  Mitigation to the States of Missouri and Illinois attendant to the replacement of Old L/D 26 at [...]

At Riverlands: If you build it, they will come. With a bow to William Kinsella.

When I first started my work on the Mississippi River, I went up to Riverlands to listen to the people up there who know wetlands and birds. They defined the success of Riverlands as a bird sanctuary: “If you build it, they will come.” Congress ordered the Corps to replace “acre for acre” every bit [...]

A Sunday Afternoon at Riverlands

Sunday the heat of the last ten days dissipated and the weather was way too good to stay inside. Off we went to walk the Chain of Rocks Bridge and then to Riverlands, the bird sanctuary behind Lock and Dam 26. We spotted a brown pelican hanging about the fringes of a flock of American [...]

Dresser Island, Pool 26, Upper Mississippi River

Public access to islands along the Mississippi is not easy, not without a boat. Dresser Island is the exception. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has built a causeway across Brickhouse Slough, which allows you an easy hike to the island.
The Upper Mississippi Conservation Area is 14,906 acres of lands devoted to wildlife scattered in [...]

Spring Migration at the Confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers

 
 Confluence Greenway posted its schedule for April and May, a celebration of the spring migration in the St. Louis area.
Confluence Greenway started in 1998, when the McKnight Foundation, based in Minneapolis, suggested that five groups it was funding with small grants, each with an interest in the Mississippi, pool their resources and form a bigger organization, [...]

Lock and Dam 26, Alton, Illinois

 
Yesterday at Riverlands, Congress’s gift to anglers and birders at Lock and Dam 26, the dam was wide open, the river bank-full, and the anglers  out in force. 
One guy had a huge catfish on a spear; a second had a string of big-mouth carp  hitched to a large piece of driftwood. Disturb a big-mouth with the [...]

Confluence and the North American Wetlands Conservation Act

 
The Migratory Bird Conservation Commission, chaired by Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar, approved a $999,570 grant under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) for wetland restoration in the Confluence Region of Missouri.
The Great Rivers Habitat Alliance calls this peninsula the Confluence Floodway and this region between the Missouri and [...]

Dead Zone

Whale Sharks in the Gulf of Mexico
During the Flood of 2008 tons of nutrients and fertilizers washed off midwestern farm fields and into the Mississippi River, which carried it to the Gulf of Mexico, where it nourished algae blooms and the growth of plankton.
This is an annual occurrence. 
Commercial fishing crews first began sighting whale sharks [...]