NWF Takes Action Protecting the Delta's Resources

National Wildlife, Feb-March, 1999

As part of its ongoing efforts to protect the nation's wetlands, the National Wildlife Federation, working with Trial Lawyers for Public Justice (TLPJ), has taken the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to court to stop the Big Sunflower River dredging project. (TLPJ is a national public-interest law firm.) NWF is also working to persuade the Corps to abandon its Yazoo backwater pumps project.

With its affiliate the Mississippi Wildlife Federation and other groups, NWF has also initiated an education effort to promote alternatives to the proposed federal flood-control plans. "Such commonsense alternatives as the purchase of flood easements are cheaper and cause less environmental damage than the projects planned by the Army Corps," says Susan Rieff, senior director of NWF's Gulf States Natural Resource Center. "They also yield more permanent flood-control benefits."

To stay informed about this issue, see the following web sites: www.nwf.org or www.tlpj.org; or write: NWF Gulf States Natural Resource Center, 4505 Spicewood Springs Road, Austin, Texas 78759.

At stake are thousands of acres of some of the nation's most productive bottomland hardwood forests and a river that nurtures what biologists believe is the densest colony of freshwater mussels on the planet