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Memories of Little Missouri

KEDM Public Radio | By Kelby Ouchley

Published February 5, 2015 at 5:18 PM EST

I have boyhood memories of motoring with my parents along a stretch of arrow-straight, asphalt highway as it passed through a vast and seemingly desolate swamp in north Louisiana. Understory palmetto fronds lent a tropical ambience and obscured the ground under the tall, dark trees. The road was an incision in the forested canopy.

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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