The Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast · Dean Klinkenberg

Wild at Heart: The Natural World of the Lower Mississippi with Jack Killgore

·1 hr 5 min·4 clips

Sturgeon, paddlefish, and buffalo can move over 1,000 miles through the free-flowing Missouri-Mississippi system.

1. The Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast episode centers on Dr. Jack Kilgore and the Lower Mississippi River’s ecology and restoration. 2. Dean Klinkenberg hosts Dr. Jack Kilgore, a longtime U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fisheries biologist who worked in the Vicksburg district and now teaches river science at Tulane University. 3. The episode asks what the Lower Mississippi was like before engineering and what still remains in its floodplain, main channel, and fish communities. 4. Kilgore describes a very meandering pre-engineering river with huge bends, secondary channels, sloughs, woody debris, and a floodplain that could spread 100-plus miles. 5. He says the Lower Mississippi still holds much of its pre-European flora and fauna and that modern-day extirpations or extinctions have not been the main story. 6. He argues that the aquatic environment has shrunk, with the floodplain reduced by more than 80 percent and many backwater habitats lost. 7. Kilgore names cypress-tupelo swamps, bottomland hardwood forest, and the annual connection to the floodplain as defining features of the river. 8. He explains the flood pulse concept and says fish and other aquatic life follow the lateral expansion of water into the floodplain each year. 9. He links that pulse to recruitment, young-of-year growth, and the energy and carbon that feed the main river. 10. He says the Lower Mississippi differs from regulated rivers such as the Arkansas River because it still has a seasonal floodplain connection. 11. Kilgore says levees, dredging, wing dams, and dikes were built to improve navigation and control floods, especially after the 1927 flood challenged the levee-only approach. 12. He notes that the mainline Mississippi River levees run from Cape Girardeau down to Baton Rouge, with French levee building beginning around New Orleans in the 1700s. 13. He says the main channel still contains bendways, straightways, crossings, sandbars, gravel bars, and dike scour pools that support fish use. 14. He explains that the main channel was once seen as barren largely because it was difficult to sample with gill nets and electrofishing. 15. He says the Lower Mississippi has about 2,000 miles of free-flowing Missouri-Mississippi river from Gavin’s Point Dam to the Gulf of Mexico. 16. He uses telemetry studies and spaghetti tags to show sturgeon, paddlefish, and buffalo moving more than 1,000 miles through that corridor. 17. Kilgore says restoration in the Lower Mississippi lagged behind the Upper Mississippi, Missouri, and Middle Mississippi, where navigation projects and the Endangered Species Act drove earlier work. 18. He names the Lower Mississippi River Conservation Committee, Ron Nasser, Angie Rogers, and a new federal restoration effort that began near Memphis with about 35 miles of river. 19. The conversation stays technical but conversational, with Kilgore giving field examples, species names, and survey methods such as trot lines and telemetry. 20. Listeners interested in river ecology, fisheries, and Mississippi restoration will get the most from this episode. 21. Listeners wanting light travel chat or a short, casual overview may skip it.

As heard by us

A steady look at a river still carrying history, habitat, and change.

The lower Mississippi is presented as more than a damaged channel; it still reads as a living system with real wilderness value. Jack Killgore is direct about what remains from before European settlement, how much the aquatic environment has shrunk, and why any restoration…

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Why you'd press play

A grounded look at the lower Mississippi's wildlife, restoration work, and river history.

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