Aimed at one such as myself who has not a thing to help this phantom bird’s plight, the idea that I might do anything constructive at all seems overly generous.

A well-written letter to the editor once and a while in support of conservation measures can really have an impact. Letter-writing and phone calls to congresscritters, especially as part of well-coordinated aampaigns, can be effective, too. Over time, a drumbeat of public pressure on the need to conserve land and water for wildlife can have a great impact. In Arkansas, conservation has become (or remained) a thoroughly bi-partisan issue, from what I understand. That’s because people who love the outdoors have found ways to make their voices heard. Had a bridge been built across the Mississippi River at Rosedale as the Yazoo cotton growers wanted, the ability of the White River NWR to support a source population of ivorybills would have been greatly diminished.

Aimed at one such as myself who has not a thing to help this phantom bird’s plight, the idea that I might do anything constructive at all seems overly generous. I have been very busy infact ignoring Mr. Ivory Bill and carrying on blindly and as usual. On a certain day last month, while thinking over its failure to fly by a spotter any time recently I might have even said “Who need’s him”!

Have been picking at “Rising Tide”, an account of the great flood of 1927. It has a very thourough acount of the development of the Mississippi flood plain. I’m just getting to the clearing of the Yazoo Delta, cotton, and the blues. It’s oh so recently gone, that great forest. We missed it by a hair, but only because our former selves were there. After the Civil War the Yazoo delta fell in to the hands of the state through property tax defaults. Mississippi sold a track of nearly eight hundred-thousand acres to the Illinois Central which was on the verge of bankruptcy. The Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad, (known to you perhaps “yellow dog” of blues songs) became by far that railway’s most profitable line. Other capitolists such as J. P. Morgan and his railroad bought other vast tracts, slavery was more or less re-instated.