A new study by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the potential for damage to fish habitats in the Driftless area of Wisconsin, a hilly region in the state’s southwestern reaches, is great, and the damage may have already been done. The findings come from a national survey of fish habitats released earlier this month.
DRIFTLESS FARM (PHOTO BY UW-STEVENS POINT) The Driftless area spans about 24,000 square miles and includes portions of southwestern Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa and northwestern Illinois, according to the agency. Because the region wasn’t raked flat by the last continental glacier, it’s full of rolling hills and spring-fed streams.
“Just minutes northwest of the state capital, the roads curve gently and the hills begin to rise invitingly,” said a recent story in Milwaukee Magazine. “Before long, there are Holsteins and horse farms, an occasional orchard, a flock of sheep as pale and fluffy as an earthbound cloud.”
The region’s agriculture, however, may be a detriment to its native fish habitats.
Using a variety of factors – including the presence of urban development and the density of farming, livestock, industrial pollution sources and habitat “fragmenters” such as dams and road crossings – the study calculates the risk for “fish habitat degradation” in watersheds.
DRIFTLESS AREA (BY NATIONALATLAS.GOV) Most of the state’s southern half is said to be at “high” risk of degradation, but the largest swath of “very high” risk lies in the Driftless.
According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, “Poor land and water management practices including intensive row crops, fertilizer use, channelization, water withdrawals, loss of perennial vegetation and invasive species have caused excessive stream bank erosion, sedimentation and poor water quality.”
The affected area includes the Mississippi River. The Driftless pollution impacts its waters “all the way to the Gulf of Mexico,” according to the study, contributing to low oxygen levels downstream.
The federal agency isn’t saying the region’s waterways are damaged or not, only that there’s a “very high” probability that they already are.
As reported in NewsBuzz, the state Department of Natural Resources recently caught a grass carp, a plant-devouring invasive species, in the Lower Wisconsin River within the Driftless area. Officials believe it had migrated from the Mississippi River during a period of spring flooding.
Trout Unlimited, a national nonprofit funded by sport fishermen to support conservation, has organized the Driftless Area Restoration Effort to “protect, restore, and enhance rivers and streams for fish and other aquatic life throughout the Driftless.”
