River Certified Spencer Bauer-MS River LA-Credit Chris Macaluso-800
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Mississippi River Diversion Builds Land, Enhances Fishing Opportunities
Southern Louisiana’s Neptune Pass, which formed naturally during higher river flows since 2018, provides a real-world example of the benefits of sediment diversions for a healthy delta
Neptune Pass didn’t even exist six years ago.
Today, the newest connection between the Mississippi River and its fish and wildlife-generating marshes moves enough water by volume into Breton Sound that it dwarfs all but about 15 other rivers in the world—and it’s a living laboratory for how a healthy, properly functioning Mississippi River is supposed to work.
Located about 70 river miles south of New Orleans and directly across from the world-renowned fishing destination of Buras, La., Neptune Pass was previously a narrow cut, known as a crevasse, in the Mississippi River’s east bank back in 2018, barely wide enough to pass a 24-foot bay boat through. A series of annual floods, especially a record-setting inundation in 2019, forced the river to find and exploit weaknesses in its banks along its lower east bank – an area where the river isn’t hemmed in by flood protection levees and so dozens of other cuts and crevasses exist.
What was a relative trickle of about 5,000 cubic feet per second in 2018 became a major pass by 2023, capturing nearly 120,000 cubic feet of water per second, or more than 15 percent of the total volume of the Mississippi during spring flooding. Almost immediately after its widening, Neptune Pass began delivering enough suspended sediment from river water to begin shallowing and filling in bays and open ponds along its path and at its mouth in Quarantine Bay.
A Natural Process
The Mississippi River was simply replicating the same processes at Neptune Pass that it had employed hundreds, if not thousands, of times over the last several millennia. It utilized a weakness in its bank as an easier way to move its abundant water and sediment toward the Gulf of Mexico. If not for that natural process, most of Louisiana and a large part of Mississippi wouldn’t exist. Preventing that natural process by blocking the river’s connection to its delta with levees is the primary reason more than 2,000 square miles of Louisiana’s delta has already sunk and eroded into the Gulf.
Increased Flows Mean More Fish
The TRCP recently hosted several river-savvy anglers on a two-day fishing and crabbing excursion in the Mississippi River, largely focused on the junction with Neptune Pass. Our goal was to talk about the importance of restoring the functionality of the river, in terms of water and sediment diversions, and see firsthand how effective they are at improving productivity and rebuilding land being lost to rising seas and storms. Regaining more historic flow patterns can occur naturally, as seen at Neptune Pass, or man-made, as TRCP and partners have worked for years to achieve with the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion. This project is designed to breathe life back into the Barataria Basin by reconnecting the Mississippi River to the marshes, bayous, and islands it originally built, but through a gate on the river that can be regulated to optimize sediment and water flows.
If not for the sediment delivered by the Mississippi River, most of Louisiana and a large part of Mississippi wouldn’t exist.
Whether a natural or dredged river diversion, the results are the same. More oxygenated water, more nutrients, more land-building sediment, and more fish and wildlife. The anglers we hosted earlier this month – representing YouTube channels Outside the Levees, Cole & Jay, Marsh Man Masson, and River Certified – reaped the benefits as they hauled in boatloads of redfish, black drum, catfish, and blue crabs.
The Pass Today
Ducks Unlimited and state and federal agencies have worked with local fishing and duck hunting guide Capt. Ryan Lambert to build terraces in Quarantine Bay and adjacent Bay Denesse. The linear earthen berms act as speed bumps, slowing the water coming from the pass and allowing the sediment to more quickly deposit and form mud and sand flats. As the water shallows, vegetation takes root and marsh emerges, forming perfect habitat for migrating waterfowl and other birds, shrimp and crabs, and a host of sought-after sportfish and gamefish like redfish, black drum and largemouth bass.
The rapid widening and deepening of Neptune Pass quickly became a concern for the Army Corps of Engineers, who worried the changes in river currents would lead to sandbars forming in the main navigation channel of the Mississippi River and even steer ocean-going ships off course. There was talk of efforts to try and completely close Neptune in 2022 – a move that angling, hunting, and conservation groups, including the TRCP, roundly opposed.
After weighing all options and taking into consideration the remarkable habitat-creating capacity of Neptune Pass, the Corps has recommended stabilizing the pass with rocks to try and prevent it from growing larger while still allowing water and sediment to flow through into Quarantine Bay. The land-building capacity would be further enhanced by more terraces, building upon the groundwork laid by Lambert and Ducks Unlimited.
Balancing the needs of navigation, flood control, and the incredibly productive, but dwindling, coastal wetlands in the Mississippi River Delta is something wildlife and fisheries advocates have been demanding from the Corps for decades. Neptune Pass gives hope those pleas are being heard and appreciated.
Aerial Neptune Pass image credit: Restore the Mississippi River Delta; all other images credit Chris Macaluso, TRCP
Sagebrush, Snowberry, and Aspen, Oh My!
Federal restoration funds and volunteers help increase the wildlife value of Idaho’s Pine Creek Bench
At the southern end of Idaho’s Big Hole Mountains, the Pine Creek Bench lays tucked between the South Fork of the Snake River and Stouts Mountain.
This picturesque bench provides invaluable winter range for deer, elk, and moose, and is also fertile ground that has attracted farmers for over a century who have grown diverse crops: wildflowers to alfalfa, potatoes to winter wheat. Like much of eastern Idaho, the plow has ruled for generations, largely relegating the bench’s wildlife value to the back burner.
In time, however, concerns about development on the bench and the nearby South Fork Canyon prompted eastern Idahoans to begin a long-term conservation effort to restore portions of the area. Led by the Bureau of Land Management and local non-profit organizations such as the Nature Conservancy, The Conservation Fund, and Teton Regional Land Trust, thoughtful conservationists began leveraging support from the Land and Water Conservation Fund and other sources to buy and/or conserve through conservation easements properties that held the highest wildlife values. Over the last four decades, a large percentage of the bench’s acreage has been restored to quality wildlife habitat and most of the canyon’s rim is free of houses.
To stop there would mean a great conservation success story, but one without a perfect ending. Once purchased, the BLM and partners didn’t have money to return their newly acquired properties to their original wild state. In many cases, obtained acres had been enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program and were covered with nonnatives such as smooth brome to reduce erosion. Nonnative species and weeds outcompeted native plants and diminished the land’s ability to support wildlife.
That is, until now.
Using money from the recently enacted Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, the BLM, local landowners, and hunter conservationists have started returning native species to the bench on properties purchased for their scenic and wildlife values. Private land enrolled in conservation easements don’t qualify for the program.
The BLM-led coalition is completing the work by enlisting nearby farmers, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, and volunteers. Spearheaded by BLM’s restoration lead Devin Englestead, the BLM contracts nearby producers to farm the recently purchased acres for five years before eventually planting the ground in native grasses. By hiring local farmers, BLM keeps their costs for tilling the land down and increases buy-in from neighbors. Farming the ground for a short period of time is an effective way to remove non-native grasses and weeds that then allows native flora to return.
“[The challenge with this project has been] the daunting task of turning so many acres of farmed land back into native habitat,” BLM public affairs specialist Bruce Hallman told the Teton Valley News in July. “The reality is that it takes at least 5 years to turn CRP land back into native grasses and plants. That long timeframe requires good planning, adequate funding and commitments from agencies, patience as we wait for nature to do its thing, and hoping that volunteers will rise to the occasion.”
This summer, it all came together. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game and Backcountry Hunter & Anglers volunteers lent their shoulders to the wheel. The IDFG used Mule Deer Initiative money to provide seedlings, and BHA provided the labor needed to get the natives in the ground.
BHA, BLM, and IDFG volunteers planted native species on roughly 1,275 acres of the bench this past summer with the idea of continuing the work annually. Volunteers planted bitterbrush, sagebrush, juniper, serviceberry, chokecherry, snowberry, milkweed, aspen, and wood rose.
The BLM focused on the parcels that connect the South Fork of the Snake River corridor with the mountains to the north. The intention is to link high-altitude summer range to winter range along the river corridor and Pine Creek Bench. By connecting the two habitats, big game survival will increase and provide higher quality hunting opportunities.
“Partnerships have helped turn it from idea to reality,” said Hallman. “The manpower that has attacked this monumental challenge could not have come from BLM staff alone. Volunteers from the nearby communities as well as Idaho Fish and Game staff have been priceless to our efforts. And local nurseries growing native plants have made the project really shine.”
Learn more about TRCP’s work in Idaho HERE.
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Photo credits: Bruce Hallman
In The Arena: Capt. Paul Dixon
TRCP’s “In the Arena” series highlights the individual voices of hunters and anglers who, as Theodore Roosevelt so famously said, strive valiantly in the worthy cause of conservation.
Paul Dixon
Hometown: East Hampton, N.Y.
Occupation: Saltwater fly fishing guide who owns Dixon’s To The Point Charters, offering fly fishing for stripers and bluefish off Montauk, N.Y., and for bonefish, permit, and tarpon in the Florida Keys.
Conservation credentials: Dixon is a past board member and current Advisory Council member of the conservation nonprofit Bonefish & Tarpon Trust (BTT) – a TRCP partner – and is responsible for helping to raise millions of dollars for marine conservation efforts. He has long been a vocal champion for striped bass conservation.
Captain Paul Dixon is nothing less than a star in the guiding space in Montauk, off the east end of Long Island, and in the Florida Keys. He essentially wrote the book on sight fishing for striped bass in the Northeastern U.S. and is the main character in author Peter Kaminsky’s celebrated 2002 book The Moon Pulled Up an Acre of Bass. Dixon has been featured on ESPN’s fishing shows Guide House: Montauk, The Walker’s Cay Chronicles and Spanish Fly; in the Millhouse Podcast; and in articles in The New York Times, Outdoor Life, The Miami Herald, New York (Magazine), Salt Water Sportsman, and Field and Stream. Dixon’s client list has included such celebrity anglers as Roger Waters (the bassist for Pink Floyd) and renowned Florida fisherman Flip Pallot. He’s Orvis-endorsed and named among the top 50 charter captains by Salt Water Sportsman. Perhaps most importantly, he’s used his considerable influence in angling circles to forward fish conservation efforts. In 2021 he was given the Izaak Walton Award from the American Museum of Fly Fishing, and in 2022, BTT bestowed him the Lefty Kreh Award for Lifetime Achievement in Conservation.
Here is his story.
My mother put me on a dock with a dropline on Balboa Island in California when I was three years old. Almost every weekend I spent on a head boat in Southern California or in a duck blind.
My whole family was steeped in hunting and fishing. As a lieutenant in the Air Force, my father was stationed in Alaska. His job was to open up fishing camps for the officers stationed on the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line [of Cold War radar stations] in 1952. He opened up the first camps in the Brooks Range on the Nac Nac River. My grandfather was a member of the Catalina Island Tuna Club in the 1930s and had his own duck club in Palmdale, Calif. He fished with author Zane Grey and singer Bing Crosby. So I grew up with great stories of outdoor adventures and dreamed of creating my own.
When I graduated from high school I was offered a job at the Wild Rose Ranch on Henry’s Lake in Idaho. Upon arrival the old timers told me, “We don’t spin fish here, kid. We fly fish,” and so the passion began. I had no nearby rivers or lakes so I began fly fishing in saltwater. I moved east in the mid-80s with the dream of opening my own fly fishing business and began Dixon’s Sporting Life, a fly fishing store in East Hampton, N.Y. I bought a flats skiff and began chasing striped bass.
“My biggest concern currently is that striped bass, again, are being depleted from all the commercial and recreational overfishing of the last 20 years.”
I have so many great memories of outdoor adventures with my father and family, but the most recent memories with my own sons come to mind. Notably, my son Andrew’s first tarpon, after 30 minutes and 10 jumps, came off, and Andrew says, “Damn they’re strong. I’m sort of glad he came off.” Recently, my oldest son, Austen, came striper fishing with me, and he caught 10 fish by 8:30 a.m., all of them over 30 pounds — a truly biblical morning.
I have fished in many wonderful places all over the world, but I have not yet fished in Alaska. After hearing throughout my young life of fishing in Alaska from my father, I have harbored the dream of going there myself, with my own sons, and now have planned a trip for August 2025.
I got involved with conservation when I moved east and realized that my dream fish, the striped bass, had been fished out. By the time that I opened my store in the early ’90s, the striped bass came roaring back after a 10-year fishing moratorium, one of the greatest conservation success stories in America. In a short period of time, however, the regulations started changing and, slowly but surely, you could see the effects on the fishery. I started going to fishery hearings to voice my concern about the fate of stripers and have been fighting the battle ever since. My ongoing conservation efforts are a way of preserving the fishery that has brought so much pleasure and excitement to my life for so many decades.
For a long time, the biggest conservation challenge in our area was the restoration of the menhaden, which were being decimated by the factory ships. To deal the problem, the ships were outlawed from fishing in New York’s state waters. The recovery of menhaden was quickly evident from the abundance of whales, sharks, bass, and dolphin that were now feeding on menhaden up and down the coast. My biggest concern currently is that striped bass, again, are being depleted from all the commercial and recreational overfishing of the last 20 years.
It’s imperative for those of us who really love to hunt and fish to become involved in the preservation of the natural world. When I was 15 years old, I went with my father on a long-range fishing trip in search of albacore, 100 miles offshore. Leaving the harbor, my father said, “I remember when I used to catch albacore right off that jetty.”
I never want to say to my kids, “I remember when,” with fishing and hunting.
Big, Wild Country: A Brooks Range Hunting and Fishing Story
TRCP’s Western conservation communications manager recounts his recent caribou hunt in Alaska’s Brooks Range, our country’s most remote landscape
A lot of folks who are lucky enough to take a fly-in hunting or fishing trip to Alaska say the extreme remoteness doesn’t fully hit them until the pilot takes off and the sound of the engine disappears.
But for me, it was on the flight in. I knew the pilot wasn’t going to stay. He wasn’t included in our float trip plans.
We flew over 150 miles from the airstrip, and once the Dalton Highway faded from view, the full expanse below was wild country. For 150 miles it was great mountains and long rivers and jeweled lakes and no roads or trails. To get out from where we were going was a distance that my brain was having trouble comprehending. I’d backpacked in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. I’d hunted wild country in the Rocky Mountains. But this place, the Brooks Range of northern Alaska, held a remoteness to a magnitude I’d never experienced.
Our group of four (Dan, David, John, and me) and three boats (I can’t row in a pool) spent the first day unloading gear, blowing up rafts, and staring in awe of a landscape we’d dreamed of for years. Since hunting on the day you fly in is illegal, we took up the fly rods and waded into the river expecting grayling and resident char.
However, when John made it to a cliff wall with an obvious pool below and yelped with excitement, I figured that must mean the sea-run Dolly Varden had made their way into the headwaters.
The fish—20-30 inches in length—hugged the bottom and were strung out in a line on the inside seam of the current. We crouched above them and swung purple, gold, and pink streamers in front of their noses. The Dollies ate with anger and ran with marine strength. Their wide, heavy bodies rode the pull of the river and their color flashed brilliantly in the cold, clear water. A few males tail danced, but most wanted to bully in the deep, giving the 8wts as much bend as they could stand.
The hens had bellies pink as a sunset and the tips of their mouths were lipsticked orange. The males sported blood-red bellies, kyped jaws, and sharp, jagged teeth. All sides were spotted red with blue halos. For an angler used to brook trout, this was the pinnacle of char fishing. That night, all I dreamed of was fish, despite being able to hunt caribou when the morning arrived.
The next day we floated downriver spooking Dollies in every hole, but our focus was on caribou. We made camp six miles downriver, then spent the afternoon and evening glassing the wide basin that opened to the river valley. Blueberries were ripe all around us, and I found a matching set of sheds below the glassing knob.
Yet no caribou showed in our hours of searching, though the landscape surrounding us displayed the scars of their meandering trails running south. The herd’s path was here, but the herd was not. Their presence etched in the foothills was a clear example of the massive ranges these animals demand for their seasonal movements. Despite supporting so much life, large mammals must travel thousands of miles across the Arctic to find forage and suitable habitats month to month. It will sometimes take a caribou herd years to use their entire range, but ensuring these habitats remain intact means the animals can move where they must in order to thrive.
After another night in the teepees, we woke early to climb a bench to the north that overlooked a wide drainage to the east. Before mid-morning, we reached a highpoint to look into the river bottom. And there, as obvious as the sun, were four bull caribou on the white rocks along the river.
We made a quick play down off the bench, following a spring seep to keep out of sight. Unfortunately, the caribou came up the bench one rise too far and spooked when the wind carried our scent to them.
As they made their way up over the bench and out of sight, I was struck by how they almost floated over the ground we’d been stumbling through. Their bodies made no wasted movements. Their heads held high carrying the Dr. Suess-esc antlers. Their fur still a dark, summer coat that popped against the willows going yellow and the blueberries and Labrador tea burning red.
The Brooks Range must be conserved to ensure future generations experience this remote country. To struggle through tussocks, to wade freezing rivers, to see grizzly tracks in the sand, to watch caribou cross country, to eat blueberries by the fistful, and to fall asleep exhausted at the end of the day and dream of doing it all again the next morning.
We followed the bulls and found them in the riverbed feeding. Dan and David traced the end of the bench out toward them, while John and I made a beeline across the dry basin to the east. After 400 yards, we hit the dry creek bed and waited to see what direction the caribou would go.
Either pushed by Dan and David or by their own sense of direction, the caribou crossed below us in a single file, and began to follow the rise that would curve them back our way. We scrambled to the cutbank, climbed up, and watched the group close the distance.
One bull was larger than the rest. His antlers tall and bent in a C. I traced him in my scope as the group closed the distance from 300 to 250 yards, and when John called the final “189,” the bull stepped up on a rise enough for me to see his vitals. With the shot he dropped into the tundra and laid still.
I thanked the bull when I set my hands on his neck and velveted antlers. The three remaining bulls made their way into the drainage to the east and disappeared. David and Dan arrived, and we all celebrated the first caribou of the trip, the immediate redemption of a missed opportunity, and the gift of good meat that would supplement the freeze-dried meals we all packed.
The day was cool and having shot the bull in the middle of a dry plain meant a grizzly wouldn’t easily sneak in on us. The clocks hadn’t yet struck 10 a.m. and so we took our time around the bull; admiring his antlers and the body that had carried him across thousands of miles of this wild country before we broke him down into quarters.
With many hands working, the quartering and packing was swift. And suddenly we were hiking back upriver, loaded heavy, with breaking down camp and meat care ahead of us. I shook my head in disbelief at the dream of a successful caribou hunt being realized so soon after our drop off.
That night around the fire, fingers greasy from tenderloins wrapped in caul fat, I knew there was over a week left of this trip, and my pulling the trigger only an instant in the whole tale. There were three tags that needed to be clipped onto antlers, and miles of river to ply for char and grayling. Those days would pass as days do, but for the moment, it was all before us, which makes for an adventure.
The hunt above occurred on the North Slope of the Brooks Range, hundreds of miles away from the proposed Ambler Road. However, the sweeping crescent of the Brooks Range running east to west across northern Alaksa offers, in its totality, the wildest country left in America. The land that the Ambler industrial corridor would cut across along the Kobuk River is different from the landscape of my hunt, but the remote character is similar, and barreling semis and thousands of culverts interrupting the movements of iconic Arctic animals and fish and degrading the wild space would ruin the experience that so many hunters and anglers travel so far to reach.
The Brooks Range must be conserved to ensure future generations experience this remote country. To struggle through tussocks, to wade freezing rivers, to see grizzly tracks in the sand, to watch caribou cross country, to eat blueberries by the fistful, and to fall asleep exhausted at the end of the day and dream of doing it all again the next morning.
The proposed Ambler Road would forever alter the wild character of this country. The 211-mile industrial corridor would slice across the southern foothills of the Brooks Range and require over 2,900 culverts with the potential to cinch off spawning areas for sheefish and Arctic grayling. The estimated 168 daily trips on the road would likely impact big game movement such as the Western Arctic caribou herd that migrates through the region.
Fortunately, after an extensive public comment period where over 14,000 hunters and anglers voiced their opposition to the corridor, the Bureau of Land Management issued its final Record of Decision denying the Ambler Road permits in June 2024. The BLM has concluded that there is no way to adequately mitigate the potential impacts of any version of the proposed Ambler Road. Still, new threats to the Brooks Range are emerging.
An amendment in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act would rescind the Bureau of Land Management’s recent decision to defend Alaska’s Brooks Range and force the Department of the Interior to permit the Ambler Road. It’s critical that the Ambler Road amendment be removed from the final version of this must-pass legislation, which funds our military and will be negotiated by lawmakers in the coming months.
We need your voice! Send a message directly to your elected officials and urge them to remove the Ambler amendment from the NDAA by clicking HERE!
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