The Delta National Wildlife Refuge

Delta National Wildlife Refuge on the map and an alligator.

Credit: Left, R. B. Alley © Penn State is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Right, © Deanna / stock.adobe.com

If you look back at the pictures of the delta of the Elwha River, you can see the regrowth of the delta after the dams were removed. The right-hand picture in that pair shows a large delta, which looks something like the delta from before the dams were built. Erosion of that delta from before the dams were built gave the no-delta situation shown in the picture on the left, taken while the dams were in place. Similar loss of deltas is happening in other places, including the delta of the Mississippi River, which we will visit next.

At the tip of the Mississippi Delta lies the Delta National Wildlife Refuge. This is one of several wildlife refuges along the US coast of the Gulf of Mexico. These refuges are homes for a great range of resident wildlife, and also draw migrants from the north. Ducks and geese, herons and cranes, gallinules and rails, the wetland birds of much of the North American continent fly in through the autumn, and then spread north again in the spring. (Yes, technically, a National Wildlife Refuge is not a National Park, but it is a national park, so we’ll cheat a little and use it—it makes a good story. And, it is just down the river from the wonderful bayous of the Barataria Reserve in the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve—well worth a stop if you're in the area!)

Take a tour of the Mississippi River Delta… and some other deltas

Here are a few pictures of deltas in Greenland, and some from the Mississippi River.

Take a tour of the Bayou, Barataria Preserve, Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, Louisiana

Here are a few scenic pictures of a wonderful park set aside to preserve nature on the Mississippi Delta below New Orleans, with a little information about fossil-fuel formation in the last two slides.