Great Rivers Partnership

The Big Woods of Arkansas

The 550,000-acre Big Woods in eastern Arkansas is the Mississippi River alluvial plain’s largest remaining corridor of bottomland forest north of Louisiana.

Lining the Cache, Arkansas and White rivers and Bayou DeView, the remarkable area shelters more than 70 distinct natural plant communities and contains abundant fish breeding and nursery areas and large mussel shoals that include globally rare species. A genetically distinct population of American black bears roams the Big Woods’ cypress-tupelo swamps and other habitats, and some 265 bird species use its forests at varying times of the year for migration, breeding and wintering. Moreover, the world’s first confirmed sightings of an ivory-billed woodpecker after six decades of none occurred in the Big Woods in 2004.

Those are among the reasons why The Nature Conservancy’s Lower Mississippi River Program has designated a priority conservation site of approximately 3.5 million acres including and surrounding the Big Woods.

Strategies and Progress

The Big Woods remain among the nation’s largest blocks of bottomland hardwood forest because of decades of work by conservation-minded landowners and citizens working with governmental agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and with non-profit organizations such as the Conservancy, Arkansas Wildlife Federation and Ducks Unlimited. More than 320,000 acres now under public ownership in the Big Woods area include the Cache River and White River national wildlife refuges; Dagmar, Rex Hancock/Black Swamp, Trusten Holder and Wattensaw wildlife management areas; and the Benson Creek and Cache River natural areas. In addition, another 60,000 acres are protected by voluntary conservation easements under such incentive-based programs as the federal Wetlands Reserve Program.

Efforts to preserve and restore the Big Woods have gained new impetus from the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker. The Conservancy, the renowned Cornell Lab of Ornithology of Ithaca, N.Y. and many other partners have formed the Big Woods Conservation Partnership with the aim of conserving 200,000 acres of Big Woods forest habitat and rivers over the next decade.

Despite these conservation successes, many stresses remain upon the Big Woods’ ecosystems. Forest fragmentation threatens mammal and bird species that depend on large, undisturbed forest blocks to survive. Alterations to area streams such as dredging, channelizations and the construction of levees, undertaken for worthy purposes such as limiting flood damage and enhancing navigation, have also adversely affected natural flooding cycles that nourish the Big Woods’ wild habitats. Rainfall run-off carrying excess sediments, nutrients and biocides is affecting water quality as it flows into the Big Woods from adjacent areas where unsustainable agricultural and forestry practices occur.

In response to such stresses, the Conservancy is working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to restore more natural stream flows in order to sustain the Big Woods’ bottomlands, is continuing to form new partnerships and strengthen existing ones so that collaborative approaches to conserving the Big Woods can be achieved, and is conducting research to advance the scientific background needed to devise and implement effective conservation measures. In addition, the Conservancy is working with local communities to promote sustainable ecotourism and with area landowners to foster sustainable land uses and participation in conservation programs with incentives of benefit to the owners.

What's to Gain?

The plant and animal communities of the Big Woods are among the most biologically diverse and productive in the world. Fully 80 percent of all aquatic species that occur within the Mississippi River’s alluvial plain can be found within the Big Woods. The area’s forests provide critical habitat for more than 265 species of birds, including the world’s largest population of wintering mallards and Neo-tropical songbirds using the woodlands as nesting grounds and migratory rest stops.

Bigwoods

LMR Program

Priority Sites

Quick Links

Big Woods Map

The Nature Conservancy and its partners work at sites along the entire length of the Mississippi River, from its headwaters in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.