Arkansas WRP Success Story

Raft Creek Bottoms in Northeast Arkansas

The Raft Creek Bottoms of White County was once an extensive tract of bottom land hardwood forest.  In the early 1960's landowners began converting the area to cropland.  By the late 1970's the area was reduced to very small parcels of wooded wetland and a few oxbow lakes.

Three thousand acres of the bottom land were reclaimed in the 1994 WRP sign-up period.  Restoration efforts began in the winter of 1997.  Approximately 70 percent of the tract was reforested with bottom land hardwoods.  The majority of the site was planted in a mix of Nuttall Oak, Willow Oak, and Green Ash.  Bare root seedlings were used in the reforestation effort; except near seed walls where natural regeneration was used.

The remaining 30 percent of the tract was restored to the largest manmade (shallow water area) herbaceous wetland in the state.  There are actually three units with an average size of 210 acres.  The summer of 1999 was the first year the shallow water areas were operational.  Drawdowns were conducted through June on two of the three units while the third was left full (semi-permanent habitat) throughout the summer.

Historically, waterfowl by the hundreds of thousands (approximately 23-25 percent of the waterfowl that winter in Arkansas) stage in the Raft Creek Bottoms along the White River.  The first winter the shallow water area was online, some 500,000 ducks visited the thousand acre shallow water area.  White geese and white-fronted geese by the thousands were foraging on tons of moist-soil weed seeds that were grown in the summer of 1998.  The waterfowl numbers were not surprising; they were expected.  Wading bird and shorebird usage in the basin over the past thirty years has been fair to poor.

During the summer of 1999, White County received approximately four inches of rainfall from the first of July to the end of October.  The semi-permanent unit was amazing.  In July a one-day survey was conducted where 3,000 shorebirds (sandpipers, stilts, and yellowlegs), 30 white pelicans, 41 egrets, 10 blue herons, 4 blue winged teal, one gadwall, 8 mallards, 22 wood ducks, and 4 trophy white-tailed bucks were observed.

This WRP project exemplifies the value wildlife value of the scrub/shrub and herbaceous wetland types in the Lower Mississippi River Valley.  Shorebirds and water birds that were rarely seen are now foraging on WRP tracts.

Last updated: November, 1999

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