Flood Impact on Bad River's Wild Rice

Today was a trip to the Kakagon Sloughs, one of the most beautiful and ecologically important places on the planet--and that's not just the opinion of Yours Truly (who might be accused of being a little biased), but also the world's wetlands ecologists, who successfully placed the Sloughs on the United Nations Ramsar list of internationally significant wetlands.

The Rice is looking pretty thin along the Bad River, but once we got to the "Y" things started to look a little better.

Still, the effects of the July 11th flood are everywhere. This aerial view of the Chequamegon Bay shows how much dirt, gravel, mud, and debris wound up in Lake Superior because of the flood. I shudder to think what would have happened if the giant open-pit taconite mine would have located in the Penokee Hills or if the Factory Farm (the 28,000-pig Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation--CAFO) is allowed to locate in the Bad River Watershed).