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America's Watershed The Sierra Club seeks a Mississippi River system restored to environmental wholeness, whose waters are drinkable from its source in Minnesota's Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico, free of sewage and toxic pollution, nourishing once again sustainable communities of native plants and animals as well as of humans. On Our Agenda
The Land The Mississippi Basin Ecoregion links seven river basins that together drain two-thirds of the continental United States: 1,231,000 square miles in 33 states and three Canadian provinces, the fourth-largest drainage basin in the world. Only a tiny percentage of it is preserved in national parks and wilderness areas--just one-tenth of one percent in Illinois, for example. Population 100 million-plus. Economy The Basin depends equally on heavy industry in the urban centers (Pittsburgh, Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis) and agriculture in the vast, fertile floodplain of the Mississippi's tributaries. On the decline are the heavy-manufacturing, rust-belt industries of the Ohio River watershed; on the rise along the lower Mississippi are plantation-style tree farms and the vile petrochemical complex known as Cancer Alley. Well-Known Fact Wetlands along the rivers purify its water, provide wildlife habitat, and act as a brake on seasonal water-level fluctuations. Channelizing the rivers means polluted water, fewer critters, and the inevitability of massive floods. Little-Known Fact In 1990, Mississippi Basin farmers applied 21 billion pounds of fertilizer and 283 million pounds of pesticides. Two Hundred Years Ago Europeans looking for gold found instead vast hardwood forests, a thriving human culture, and a wealth of wildlife: monstrous-looking paddlefish and alligator gar, sun-darkening flocks of waterfowl, countless buffalo, grizzly, beaver, and antelope. Nature Meccas The Upper Mississippi Wildlife Refuge spans four states and is a major stopover on the Mississippi Flyway for Canada geese, bald eagles, and tropics-bound songbirds. In Indiana, the Charles Deam Wilderness exemplifies the rolling oak and hickory ridgelands that once extended as far as south-central Minnesota. Superlatives The astonishing volume of the waters that pour together at the Great Confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers. The Sierra Club is working to protect the area as a new national reserve. Popular Play The way to see the region is by canoe, from the rivers of Minnesota and Wisconsin to the Louisiana bayous. Progress Over the last two decades the Sierra Club has succeeded in listing the Louisiana black bear as an endangered species; winning groundwater protection for Nebraska, Minnesota, and Wisconsin; passing statewide wilderness bills in ten states; and developing volunteer "swamp squads" in Illinois to protect wetlands. Unprotected Treasures The bottomland forests of the lower Mississippi basin, whose indiscriminate clearing for agriculture destroys a unique wildlife habitat, accelerates erosion, and diminishes fisheries. Biggest Threats Heavy metals, toxic chemicals, inadequately treated sewage, and pesticides flushing into the river system; vital riverine wetlands destroyed through agricultural draining and suburban sprawl; poor farming practices leading to the loss of a million tons of topsoil a year to erosion; and continued construction of locks, channels, and dikes on the upper Mississippi, despite their proven destructiveness. Celebrators Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi and Letters From the Earth, Jonathan Raban in Old Glory, An American Voyage. Tells It Like It Is The Control of Nature by John McPhee (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1989); Father of Waters by Norah Deakin Davis and Joseph Holmes (Sierra Club Books, 1982). To Learn More
Contact: The Sierra Club's Midwest office also serves as the headquarters for the Mississippi River Basin Alliance, a coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated to the ecoregion's restoration. Photo courtesy Philip Greenspun. Up to Top |
