By Mark Herwig
All might look well with the Missouri River in this photo, but looks are deceiving. The river, here in flood stage, has been greatly modified for human use, greatly diminishing wildlife habitat in the process. (photo provided by the John Deere Company)
“Ol’ man river,
Dat ol’ man river
He mus’ know sumpin’
But don’t say nuthin’,
He jes’ keeps rollin’
He keeps on rollin’ along.”
-Paul Robeson
Robeson was singing about the Mississippi River, which like many major United States rivers, no longer rolls along much at all.
In fact, the Mississippi, the nation’s largest river, and the longest the Missouri, are pretty much stagnant pools for moving barges full of corn, coal, rock and other products of modern life. Both rivers are blocked with a series of dams and barge lifting systems called locks and are cut off and constricted by dikes and other flow structures that have destroyed most of the rivers’ once lush and extensive wildlife habitat.
