CASS — The Mulberry River was the focus of a river wellness program conducted last week by experts with The Nature Conservancy and the Ozark National Forest.
After a spring and summer of abundant rainfall provided paddlers with an extended season of rollicking whitewater fun, the Mulberry was quiet and deserted as the five-man team set out to paddle the 3. 7-mile stretch between Byrd’s Adventure Camp and the Redding Campground.
With the river down to about half the flow for desirable floating, the stretch was more of a slog than a paddle, resulting in the peaceful atmosphere being frequently disturbed by the sounds of dragging and scraping, grunting and groaning, splishing and splashing.
Most of the crew had spent the previous two days dragging their way through the eight miles of river from Wolf Pen to Byrd’s and were looking somewhat bedraggled. Nevertheless, they would soon demonstrate a good-natured spirit for the task ahead.
Like most whitewater streams, the rapids of the Mulberry are rated in difficulty as Class I, Class II and so on. The team, however, had developed their ratings for the difficulty of the drags. There would be plenty rated up to Class III.
The most memorable came just above Redding Campground, where the riverbed became a solid, bank-to-bank boulder garden stretching nearly 200 yards with exposed rocks ranging in size from seals to walruses. It got a tongue-in-cheek rating of Class IV.
Such was an example of the effort being devoted to the Ozark Rivers Legacy Program led by Ethan Inlander out of The Nature Conservancy’s Ozark Highlands office in Fayetteville.
With the mission of preserving the health of Ozark river systems, the program in Northwest Arkansas has focused on the Mulberry and Kings rivers. Threats to water quality from sedimentation associated with erosion and nutrient inflows associated with agricultural practices have received special attention. While driving to the Mulberry with Inlander last Thursday morning, he explained what has been done in the river’s watershed over the past two to three years.
WATERSHED WORK “We’ve already mapped 300-400 miles of unpaved roads in the upper watershed to assess the sources of sediment inflows into the river,” Inlander said. “We assessed things like stream crossings, ditches, road surfaces and road gradient.” Such mapping became the basis of a computerized “erosion model” that allows estimating the total amount of sediment entering the river from all the roads.
“The ultimate aim is to reduce the speed and volume of [sediment ] runoff with road improvements in high-priority places,” Inlander said.
His comments about sediment runoff brought to mind an overflight of the Mulberry last year in an ultralight aircraft piloted by Zen Boulden of Cass.
On the morning of the flight, the river had been hit with about 2 inches of hard, fast rain that rendered the river extremely muddy. A lot of sediment obviously was coming from somewhere.
Disturbed by the sight, Boulden detoured from the river to provide aerial views of sediment sources, such as new raw and rutted logging roads and patches of forest that had been bulldozed into clearings to provide loading areas for logs.
Inlander said he hopes the computer model will sell county governments and others on the benefits of road improvements to reduce sedimentation.
“I call it a win-win-win situation — less road maintenance costs for counties, better driving conditions for people using the roads and improved water quality in the river,” Inlander said.
The ongoing project on the Mulberry seeks to do for the riverbed and banks what the mapping of the roads did in the watershed. It is also a joint effort between The Nature Conservancy and the National Forest Service on a 50-50 cost-sharing basis, Inlander said.
DISSECTING THE RIVER Arriving at Redding Campground on a cloudy, humid morning, we met Ozark Highlands office team members Daniel Millican, Mark Kottmeyer and Cory Galipeau, who were breaking camp and getting ready for another laborious day on the river. They were soon joined by Tony Crump, a Russellville-based forest hydrologist with the Ozark National Forest. Millican and Crump would play the primary roles in dissecting a river technically described as “a meandering, boulder-cobble structured stream with some bedrock.” Their critical gear would involve high-tech electronic units that combined global positioning system and computer capabilities.
Later, Crump would take time to explain his agency’s interest in the Ozark Rivers Legacy Program.
“We are in a unique situation for the state for having an inordinate amount of scenic and extraordinary water resource streams in the Ozark National Forest,” he said, noting the streams are important for recreation and to the overall health of the ecosystem.
“The information collected out here will help us understand how we are meeting the objectives of our forest plan, one of which is protection of water quality,” Crump said.
After towing a trailer loaded with three canoes and a kayak to Byrd’s, we entered the river at a small pool. Within 50 yards of floating, we encountered the first of many drags through nearly every riffle along the river. Fortunately, everyone was wearing wading shoes with felt soles for better traction on the slippery rocks.
My attention was immediately drawn to the large and bright yellow gizmos in the hands of Millican and Crump. They were unlike any GPS units I had seen.
Crump said they cost as much as $ 8, 000 and can pinpoint positions down to a matter of inches. While the GPS function provided a digitized map of the river, the computer function allowed detailed data on river features to be coordinated with the map.
Moving slowly and haltingly down the river, Millican and Crump each focused on different types of river habitat.
Millican’s job was to identify and catalog bank habitat conditions, rating them as stable or moderately stable in the more natural areas or affected by varying degrees of erosion and sediment runoff in problem areas. He also took note of land-use practices beyond the banks along a river mostly lined with private property that includes campgrounds, cabins and farms.
Millican pointed out a bank lined with brush and trees down to the water’s edge as being a stable bank. At another spot, he identified a moderately stable bank as a sloping bank with tightly compacted rocks, gravel and dirt below a line of trees and weeds on top.
“You can see how it pretty much stood up to the floods last spring,” he said.
As for affected areas, he took note of muddy trails where cattle had been coming down to the river to drink and a place where a bare four-wheeler trail came down to the water.
A mile or so into the trip, the first serious example of erosion appeared where a dirt bank had been sheered off vertically along what appeared to be nothing but pasture on top.
“This is a classic vertical eroded bank,” Millican said. “It’s what happens when you remove all the trees and brush.” “What we hope to do with our data is prioritize places like this and then try to enter into partnerships with the landowners to restore the habitat and reduce the erosion,” Inlander said.
Meanwhile, Crump had been going downstream, focusing on the characteristics of the river within the channel and beneath the water, entering data on the progression of pools, riffles and rapids, along with the presence of gravel, bedrock and grass beds. He also took note of where sediment had accumulated on the bottom.
And so the intensive dissection went for more than four hours.
By the time we had made it through the final “Class IV drag” and reached the Redding Campground, I was ready to join Inlander for the trip back to Fayetteville.
With rain beginning to fall from rumbling clouds, Millican and Crump continued downstream, intent on dissecting and diagnosing another three miles of river.
Watching them float away, my parting thought was that all those who love the Mulberry River can hearken to a line from a classic James Taylor song: “Ain’t it good to know you’ve got a friend.”
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