Qualla: Cache River National Wildlife Refuge

Cache River National Wildlife Refuge: Introduction

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. In the 1970s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed dredging and straightening the Cache River in eastern Arkansas -- standard operating procedure for turning wild waterways into efficient drainage channels for agriculture. Duck hunters stopped them. The men who waded into flooded timber each autumn to hunt mallards understood something the engineers' models did not: this tangled, meandering, swamp-choked river system was irreplaceable. Their successful fight laid the groundwork for the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1986 and now encompassing nearly 69,000 acres of the largest remaining contiguous bottomland hardwood forest in the United States. It is a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance, the most critical wintering ground for mallard ducks in North America, and the place where, for a few electric months in 2005, scientists believed they had found a bird back from the dead.

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Cache River National Wildlife Refuge: The Flooded Forest

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region, Public domain. The refuge stretches 70 miles along the Cache River's floodplain, from its mouth at Clarendon north to the town of Grubbs, spanning portions of Jackson, Woodruff, Prairie, and Monroe counties. The landscape is defined by water in all its forms: meandering sloughs, crescent-shaped...

Image: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region | Public domain

Cache River National Wildlife Refuge: Wings Over the Bottomlands

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region, Public domain. Every autumn, the refuge transforms into one of the great wildlife spectacles of the continent. Mallard ducks descend by the hundreds of thousands, drawn to the flooded timber and rice fields of the surrounding agricultural landscape. The nearby town of Stuttgart proclaims itself...

Image: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region | Public domain

Cache River National Wildlife Refuge: The Ghost Bird

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team, Public domain. On April 29, 2005, a team from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology announced something that electrified the birding world: they had captured a four-second video and recorded audio calls of an ivory-billed woodpecker in the Cache River refuge. The ivory-billed, the largest woodpecker i...

Image: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team | Public domain

Cache River National Wildlife Refuge: Restoring What Was Lost

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MJPlante1, CC BY-SA 4.0. The refuge continues to grow through purchases from willing landowners. Most acquired land was formerly drained farmland, and the long-term goal is to reforest these areas with native vegetation, reconnecting the Cache River and Bayou DeView watersheds into a continuous forested ...

Image: MJPlante1 | CC BY-SA 4.0