Think big and plant big, and you’ll see wildlife benefits for decades to come.
In my lifetime, I have only known the Delta to be an expanse of rowed-up dirt that is planted annually with various crops that feed and clothe the world. Deltans can look across a field that continues for miles with no apparent end. Approaching lightning storms on hot summer nights can be viewed from what seems to be as far away as Texas.
I was so accustomed to the wide-open vista that when I enrolled in Mississippi State in the early 1990s, I became immediately claustrophobic due to the surrounding timbered hills.
However, the wide-open Delta landscape that I and thousands of other Mississippians have known for the last 50-60 years is rapidly changing. More land is being pulled out of agricultural production and being restored to the bottomland hardwood ecosystem that it once was. I’ll never see it “like it used to be,” but it is exciting to see marginal, low-lying areas converted back to trees.Click here to read more on Permanent Plots
