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Bottomland Hardwood Forests: An Imperiled National Treasure

Mississippi River Delta

What remains of the bottomland hardwood forests of the Mississippi River Delta today clings to the rivers of Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. No other wetland system in North America has suffered such a tremendous reduction in area as have these forests now considered one of the most imperiled ecosystems in the world.

Before being altered by man, an area 80 miles wide in some parts of the Delta was was inundated during periods of great flooding. It was the largest contiguous forested wetland in North America. These floodwaters built rich, wet soils on which an immense forest took root — “the big woods,” as William Faulkner called it, inhabited by wolves, panthers, bears, waterfowl and songbirds. These forested wetlands of tupelo, bald cypress, oak and hickory blanketed 24 million acres of the delta, interlaced with bayous, rivers, oxbow lakes and sandy ridges.

But in less than 200 years, that 24 million acres was reduced to 4.4 million scattered acres, cut down for timber and to make way for agriculture. After the Civil War, timber companies from the North and Midwest, where forests already were cut to capacity, bought hundred-thousand-acre plots for as little as 12 cents an acre. Laborers earning 50 cents a day manned the long crosscut saws that could fell centuries-old trees in an hour.

Further destruction to these forests occurred as rivers were contained behind levees and dams. The floodplain was cut off from the water, and trees could not regenerate in the drier soils. Some animals went extinct, as many believed that the ivory-billed woodpecker had.

In 1937, decades after much of the ivory bill’s forest habitat had disappeared, ornithologist James Tanner documented 13 birds in what was left of the Singer Tract, a remnant of bottomland hardwood forest in Louisiana. Oak trees there were reserved for making sewing-machine cabinets, and as logging progressed, the birds’ numbers dropped.

Tanner proposed turning the tract into a nature preserve, pleading along with the National Audubon Society that every forest clear-cut means “less dead wood, fewer insect borers and less food for woodpeckers.” But the Singer sewing machine company sold the land to a Chicago-based lumber company, and Tanner was called to duty in World War II. Wood that had sheltered the ivory-bills soon became ammunition boxes and caskets.

When Tanner revisited the tract in 1941, he found only six ivory-bills.

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© Arthur A. Allen/Cornell Lab of Ornithology

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