Willows

KEDM Public Radio | By Kelby Ouchley

Published January 27, 2020 at 9:00 AM EST

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K. Ouchley

During the Yazoo Pass expedition of the Civil War, Union Admiral Porter wrote that his flagship Cincinnati ran into a six-hundred-yard bed of willows under a full head of steam. "and there she stuck; the willow wythes ... held her as if in a vise." Taking advantage of the situation, Confederates pounded the flotilla with an artillery crossfire, and only with the greatest efforts was the Cincinnati freed to make her escape and end the failed expedition.

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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