The Tombigbee Watershed and the Sipsey Wilderness

 

Tombigbee River Basin ( https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Location-of-the-Tombigbee-River-basin-the-Mobile-River-basin-and-the-Ecoregion-65-in_fig5_269040055)

 My hometown watershed is the Tombigbee River Basin. The Tombigbee begins in Mississippi and then weaves into Alabama. It eventually joins with the Black Warrior River, the Alabama River, and the Mobile River before it drains into the Gulf of Mexico. With 12 dams, the Tombigbee has been heavily engineered. Many of the Tombigbee’s waterbodies have been listed as impaired waters for problems such as metals, pathogens, and organic enrichments. Sources for these problems include agriculture, pasture grazing, animal feeding operations, industry and mining, atmospheric deposition, infrastructure failure, and municipalities. Strategic Habitat Units are designated throughout the Tombigbee. These are areas where Alabama focuses conservations efforts for the recovery, management, and restoration of rare mussels, snails, fish, and crayfish operations.

Another big threat facing the Tombigbee are invasive species. Like we talked about in lecture this week, invasive carp are wreaking havoc in freshwater ecosystems. They’re a problem in the Tombigbee where silver carp are depleting the base of the food chain and are threatening fisheries, especially bass populations. There are small populations of zebra mussels that have been spotted in Tombigbee waterways. A few other invasives that are a big concern are wild hogs (spreads disease), Chinese privet (takes up wildflower habitat), nutria (reduce vegetation and damage water banks), and Cuban bulrush (a new invasive that forms a dense mat and clogs up the waterway).

 Silver Carp (https://www.outdooralabama.com/articles/wff-cautiously-optimistic-about-spread-silver-carp)

 There are a variety of management strategies for the variety of invasives that plague the Tombigbee. For example, there’s unlimited hog hunting, mechanical removal of the Chinese privet, and herbicides for bulrush. The US Fish and Wildlife Service recently approved Alabama’s plan for managing nuisance species, and now Alabama is eligible to receive up to 100K to fight aquatic invasive species. The plan for some of this money is to install Bio-Acoustic Fish Fence systems. These technologies use sound signals, lighting, and bubble currents to deter invasive carp from swimming through locks. The hope is to keep them above a certain point, so they don’t spawn in waters below and there’s hope that they can be eliminated from those waters in time.

My sub-watershed is the Sipsey Watershed which drains into the Tombigbee. It’s within a National Forest. Before the Sipsey was protected, the Sipsey was actually the subject of serious political controversy that drew national attention. This controversy involved those who wanted to protect the area under The Wilderness Act and those who wanted to take economic advantage of the area’s richness. In 1924, Aldo Leopold convinced the government to protect the first wilderness area. Leopold had developed and written a concept of wilderness with specific criteria to establish this first wilderness area in New Mexico. People seeking wilderness area protection for the Sipsey realized the Sipsey did not meet these exact criteria, but they persuaded Congress to reinterpret the qualifications for wilderness. The Sipsey was the first to be declared under the new interpretation of The Wilderness Act.

To paint a picture of the ecological richness of the area:

·       Presences of gorges, springs, uplands, etc.

·       26 plants near Southern Limits (Canada hemlock, sweet birch, etc.)

·       12 endangered wildflowers grow in the area

·       Stands of huge hardwoods that escaped the logging operations

·       Refuge for aquatic animal species, 102 species of fish, 42 species of mussels, 12 species of crayfish, etc.

·       Habitat for approximately 80 species of woodland birds

 

Despite being protected, this area still faces intense ecological threats such as climate change and human activities. One threat that ties into last week’s blog prompt is “loving it to death.” Large traffic into the area by well-meaning people who want to appreciate the Sipsey can cause long lasting damage to the ecosystem.

 

 

Sipsey Wilderness (http://stevejonesgbh.com/2020/02/12/my-first-visit-to-sipsey-wilderness/)

 

Sources:

Hopper, Jonathan D., et al. “The Sipsey River, Alabama: A Crayfish Diversity ‘Hotspot’?” Southeastern Naturalist, vol. 11, no. 3, 2012, pp. 405–14. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41679671. Accessed 12 Jun. 2022.

Alabama Strategic Habitat Unit (SHU) active. Alabama Strategic Habitat Unit (SHU) | U.S. Geological Survey. (n.d.). Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://www.usgs.gov/centers/wetland-and-aquatic-research-center/science/alabama-strategic-habitat-unit-shu

Alabama plan for Fighting Invasive River Species approved. Enewscourier.com. (2022, February 21). Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://www.enewscourier.com/news/alabama-plan-for-fighting-invasive-river-species-approved/article_675df9b8-932a-11ec-9dd5-9729cc67a675.html

Broom, B. (2019, May 14). Creepy fish. wild hogs. obnoxious birds. what has their invasion done to Mississippi? Ledger. Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://www.clarionledger.com/story/magnolia/2019/05/14/wild-hogs-silver-carp-nutria-starlings-sparrows-snakehead-invasive-species-plague-mississippi-tips/1100214001/

McGuire, R. (2021, November 29). All about the Tombigbee Basin. AWWareness. Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://wp.auburn.edu/aww/all-about-the-tombigbee-basin/

Phillips, Doug. Discovering Alabama. Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://www.discoveringalabama.org/23-sipsey-wilderness.html.

Pillion, D.  (2016, February 8). Volunteers fight invasive privet in Sipsey Wilderness. al. Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://www.al.com/news/2016/02/sipsey_wilderness_proves_a_bea.html

Sipsey Wilderness - discovering Alabama. (n.d.). Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://www.discoveringalabama.org/uploads/1/0/3/2/103210354/sipsey_wilderness.pdf