[birdky] Sloughs article in the Henderson Gleaner; no sightings

September 9th's Henderson Gleaner newspaper had an article on the Sloughs based on a talk by Mike Morton, of the Sloughs WMA. Mike had addressed the Rotary Club.

With permission of Chuck Stinnett from the Gleaner I have posted the article here.

Of course this is Copyright 2005, The Gleaner.

Charlie
Henderson Co.

A slough of good things
Wildlife biologist: This area has unique resource
By CHUCK STINNETT, Gleaner staff 831-8343 * cstinnett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
September 9, 2005
To some people, the sloughs are just thick muck full of bugs.
And, Mike Morton readily concedes, they are that.

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But he sees much more in the thousands of acres of Henderson and Union counties that are periodically or permanently under water.
Morton, who is area supervisor and wildlife biologist for the state's Sloughs Wildlife Management Area, sees a complex ecosystem that sustains a vast array of migratory birds and other wildlife, either for a few weeks or months or throughout the year.
Pond Creek marsh, for example, is ideal for both showy American white locusts with their luscious white blooms as well as bitterns, a secretive, hard-to-spot shorebird, he told Henderson Rotarians on Thursday.
The Sloughs Wildlife Management Area, located primarily in the Geneva, Smith Mills and Uniontown bottoms, consists of some 10,600 acres in two counties.
Of those, 7,700 acres are open to the public year-round, while approximately 3,000 are closed from Nov. 1 through March 15, when migrating geese and ducks take up winter residence here.
The sloughs are inviting to many species, from blue-winged teal ducks that stop off on their yearly travels from central Canada to Venezuela, to the copperbelly water snake, a non-poisonous candidate for the federal endangered species list; towering cypress sloughs thrive in standing water while duckweed, the world's smallest flowering plant, floats serenely on the water.
The sloughs provide some ideal habitat for young wood ducks to grow up, safe from both aerial and ground predators, Morton said.
And the sloughs are a magnet for both rarely seen birds and the birdwatchers who flock to see them. "We had 30 or 40 carloads last year" when some adult moorhen were spotted here, Morton said.
"The same thing happened a few years ago with the glossy ibis," he recalled later. "And there was a ruff spotted on a nearby property; in a matter of three hours there were 15 carloads of people after a boy came by (the sloughs management office) and asked if he could borrow the phone and make a collect call."
The area around the sloughs also attracts legions of waterfowl hunters each winter. Morton said that it is the license fees from hunters, fishermen and boaters who provide the funding to operate the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.
The Sloughs Wildlife Management Area, Morton said, preserves a sliver of the state's natural heritage.
"Eighty percent of Kentucky's wetlands are gone -- cleared, drained, farmed, turned into subdivisions or industrial parks or riverports -- and they're not ever coming back," he said.
"We can never replace them. But we can try to mimic those wetlands."
Morton and his staff of four try to do just that. With pumps and 13 miles of low levees, they manage 785 acres of ground by intentionally flooding it in stages. "We try to mimic the natural wetland function, the seasons" when water rises and recedes, providing crucial habitat for various species.
The management area also includes considerable farmland, including acreage where corn, sunflowers and other crops are left in the field to attract waterfowl, mourning doves and other wildlife.
Some of the farmland is being retired. In 1997, 200 acres of marginal ground were taken out of production so that swamp white oak and other planted seedlings can grow into future bottomland hardwood forests; another 200 acres will be retired in 2006, some of which will become upland hardwood forests.
"Planting a seedling in 2006 is probably not going to benefit my generation a lot," Morton, a 27-year veteran of the fish and wildlife agency, said. "It takes 35 to 50 years to get a viable bottomland hardwood community up and growing. But I have a couple of nephews who will see them."
Besides the vast sloughs west of Geneva in Henderson County, the wildlife management area includes a couple of tracts near Hebbardsville that total just 185 acres.
The state also has established the Green River Forest on state-owned land near Baskett.
But the proposed Green River Wildlife Refuge that would stretch from Horseshoe Bend past the cypress sloughs north of Audubon State Park and beyond is stalled.
"It's been dead in the water for four years," Morton said. "It had the worst timing in history. It hit Washington in August (2001) before Sept. 11."
"It will happen someday," he said of the federal refuge. "But it won't be anytime soon. There is the war (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and Louisiana and the hurricane" that are consuming federal dollars.

Copyright 2005, The Gleaner



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