Mile 352.5 - LBD St. Catherine National Wildlife Refuge

352.5 LBD St. Catherine National Wildlife Refuge

A beautiful narrow bayou enters the river left bank descending at 352.5, at the base of a stand of tall cottonwoods. This bayou marks the upstream boundary of St. Catherine National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), which follows the river through this stretch in a ragged mosaic of protected bottomlands from the Natchez Bluffs down to the northern tributaries of the Homochitto River. The 24,589 acre refuge is an important migration waystop for the wood stork, the only stork that breeds in North America.

Ninety percent of St. Catherine Creek NWR is located within the annual floodplain of the Mississippi River and is considered bottomland hardwood forest habitat. Historically, the entire refuge was forested, however, nearly two-thirds of the refuge was cleared in the 1960's for row-crop agriculture. Since the establishment of a refuge, much of the lands have been planted back to bottomland hardwood tree species. Today, few areas within the Lower Mississippi River Valley exist without levees, thus flood naturally.” St. Catherine Creek NWR is greatly influenced by the annual inundation of floodwaters from the Mississippi and Homochitto Rivers, creating important backwater habitat with landscape features such as ridges and swales, sloughs and drains, and oxbow lakes. Some of the oxbow lakes are dominated by the bald cypress-water tupelo forest community.

Wood Storks

Wood storks are a common visitor of St. Catherine Creek NWR during August and September when much of the water is drying up and food resources are being concentrated in small pools. Because the refuge is within the floodplain of the Mississippi River and not protected by large levees, it is common for the river to recede from the refuge during late July through early September. This event can draw over 4,000 wood storks from their breeding habitats in Mexico and Central America to the refuge to utilize evaporating pools to catch fish and invertebrates.

The wood stork is a subtropical and tropical species, which breeds in much of South America, Central America and the Caribbean. It is the only stork that presently breeds in North America. In the United States there is a small and endangered breeding population in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, along with a recently discovered rookery in southeastern North Carolina. The wood stork is a broad-winged soaring bird that flies with its neck outstretched and legs extended. It typically forages where lowering water levels concentrate fish in open wetlands; it also frequents paddy fields. Walking slowly and steadily in shallow water up to its belly, it seeks prey, which, like that of most of its relatives, consists of fish, frogs and large insects. It catches fish by holding its bill open in the water until a fish is detected. In the United States, the wood stork favors cypress trees in swamps, ditches, and shallowly flooded emergent marshes.

Wintering Waterfowl

St. Catherine Creek NWR was established to provide a habitat and protection for wintering waterfowl, particularly for mallards, Northern pintails, blue-winged teal, and wood ducks. The refuge provides a diversity of habitats for waterfowl that include shallowly flooded moist-soil impoundments, scrub-shrub wetlands, and cypress-tupelo swamps. Wintering waterfowl utilize each of these habitats during the winter to find a variety of foods, cover, and to begin pair bonding for the spring. Waterfowl abundance will vary by year, but could range from 20,000-50,000 waterfowl during peak times of the year, which usually occur in early to mid-January. Common winter visitors include the mallard, Northern pintail, gadwall, Northern shoveler, green-winged/blue-winged teal, wood duck, and American wigeon.

Alligator Gar

The alligator gar is a large prehistoric fish native to North America, particularly the lower Mississippi River and Gulf Coast states. It is the largest of seven species of gar with some as long as 10 feet and weighing 300 pounds! They can live to be over 50 years old! The largest alligator gar caught in Mississippi weighed 215 pounds and was caught in 2003 in the Mississippi River near St. Catherine Creek National Wildlife Refuge. Alligator gar were historically found from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico within the Mississippi River Valley and its tributaries, but over the past century, that range has been dramatically reduced.

Gar live in lakes, bayous, slow moving rivers, and are able to tolerate brackish and some salty water in coastal marshes and bays. This inland fish prefer slow-moving rivers with wide floodplains that usually flood during the spring. This flooding creates shallow backwater areas that are good for spawning. Unfortunately for the alligator gar and other floodplain species, flood control measures such as levees and dams have largely eliminated their preferred spawning habitat in the Lower Mississippi River Valley. The loss of habitat has contributed significantly to population declines throughout the region. St. Catherine Creek National Wildlife Refuge is an important, perhaps critically important, spawning area for alligator gar. Each year fisheries biologists remove eggs from the alligator gar they catch (and release) at the refuge and use the young fish to restock other areas. Extensive research is also being conducted on the refuge to gain a better understanding of the gar's ecological needs.

Many species depend on the flooding by the Mississippi River. Alligator gar utilize the shallowly flooded fields to spawn during spring floods but will seek refuge during the dry periods in permanent wetlands such as oxbow lakes during the summer and fall. The abundance of oxbow lakes with connections to open areas that are inundated during spring floods are critical to the success of alligator gar. Many fish species have evolved with the dynamic water level fluctuations by the Mississippi River. Wood storks along with many species of herons and egrets will travel long distances to the refuge to take advantage of the abundant food resources provided by the receding Mississippi River, as it recharges and restocks the lakes, ditches, impoundments with fish. As the water recedes, smaller wetland dependent birds called shorebirds utilize the exposed mudflat created by the prolonged flooding. When the waters recede, the refuge may provide as much as 2,000-3,000 acres of shallowly flooded wetlands and mudflat habitat available for shorebirds to forage. Because many other areas along the Mississippi River Valley during this time of year are typically dry, St. Catherine Creek NWR is an important shorebird migration stopover during the fall migration south. Waterfowl utilize the moist-soil wetlands, cropland areas, and flooded forests during the winter months for food resources, cover, rest, and pair bonding. These habitats provide a tremendous food sources that refuel energy demands for waterfowl during the winter and for the migration northward in the spring.

(From the St. Catherine Wildlife Refuge website)