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August Walk to The Wreck

KEDM Public Radio | By Kelby Ouchley

Published November 19, 2020 at 7:45 AM EST

Just after daybreak on this unreasonably cool, late August morning we walked to the Wreck, a hike that traversed two ecosystems, and witnessed a bit of magic. From our house on the edge of the Pleistocene terrace where the historical forest was a mix of upland hardwoods and pines, we descended into the bottomland hardwood forest of the Bayou D'Arbonne floodplain. The descent was only thirty feet, but for the biota it was as drastic as 3,000 feet on a Colorado mountain.

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Kelby Ouchley

Kelby was a biologist and manager of National Wildlife Refuges for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for more than 30 years. He has worked with alligators in gulf coast marshes and Canada geese on Hudson Bay tundra. His most recent project was working with his brother Keith of the Louisiana Nature Conservancy on the largest floodplain restoration project in the Mississippi River Basin at the Mollicy Unit of the Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge, reconnecting twenty-five square miles of former floodplain forest back to the Ouachita River.

See stories by Kelby Ouchley