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Drought

Ouchley
K. Ouchley

From our place on the edge of a Louisiana swamp, I can smell the drought.  The usual organic brew of odors is absent.  Now it smells like northern New Mexico in early autumn -- like a toddy of weathered adobe and rabbit bush resin.  It is late October and we have had 1/2 inch of rain since the 5th day of July.  

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.
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