Rivers under Siege is a wrenching firsthand account of how human
interventions, often well intentioned, have wreaked havoc on West
Tennessee's fragile wetlands. For more than a century, farmers and
developers tried to tame the rivers as they became clogged with
sand and debris, thereby increasing flooding. Building levees and
changing the course of the rivers from meandering streams to
straight-line channels, developers only made matters worse. Yet the
response to failure was always to try to subdue nature, to dig even
bigger channels and construct even more levees-an effort that
reached its sorry culmination in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers'
massive West Tennessee Tributaries Project during the 1960s. As a
result, the rivers' natural hydrology descended into chaos,
devastating the plant and animal ecology of the region's wetlands.
Crops and trees died from summer flooding, as much of the land
turned into useless, stagnant swamps. The author was one of a small
group of state waterfowl managers who saw it all happen, most sadly
within the Obion-Forked Deer river system and at Reelfoot Lake.
After much trial and error, Johnson and his colleagues in the
Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency began by the 1980s to abandon
their old methods, resorting to management procedures more in line
with the natural contours of the floodplains and the natural
behavior of rivers. Preaching their new stewardship philosophy to
anyone who might listen-their supervisors, duck hunters,
conservationists, politicians, federal agencies-they were often
ignored. The campaign dragged on for twenty years before an
innovative and rational plan came from the Governor's Office and
gained wide support. But then, too, that plan fell prey to
politics, legal wrangling, self-interest, hardheadedness, and
tradition. Yet, despite such heartbreaking setbacks, the author
points to hopeful signs that West Tennessee's historic wetlands
might yet be recovered for the benefit of all who use them and
recognize their vital importance. Jim W. Johnson, now retired, was
for many years a lands management biologist with the Tennessee
Wildlife Resources Agency. He was responsible for the overall
supervision and coordination of thirteen wildlife management areas
and refuges, primarily for waterfowl, in northwest Tennessee.
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