White River Refuge Center Opens Door to Key Habitat

Jim Taylor, travel writer
Arkansas Tourism

ST. CHARLES – Entering the front door of the White River National Wildlife Refuge’s visitors center, guests are immediately dwarfed by a 28-foot-tall replica of the massive trunk and lower limbs of a mature bald cypress. Its knees poke through the clear plastic surface of a three-dimensional depiction of life in oxbow waters that contains models and specimens of fish, snakes, mussels, frogs and turtles.

A taxidermic black bear stands on hind paws near the trunk’s fluted base, and those who crane their necks upward can spot bear cubs, a raccoon, an owl, a flying squirrel, a pileated woodpecker and other creatures that inhabit the refuge. Behind the trunk, visitors can switch on a light to reveal a mother bear and cubs denned in a hollow within the cypress.

It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate introduction to a refuge that preserves a substantial portion of the 500,000-acre Big Woods, one of the largest remaining bottomland hardwood forests in the Mississippi River Valley. Including parts of four eastern Arkansas counties, the refuge extends along its namesake stream from a few miles above the White’s convergence with the Mississippi northward for 92 miles, to the river town of Clarendon.

More than 350 lakes totaling some 4,000 acres, numerous sloughs, several bayous and the White River lace with flowing and still waters the refuge’s territorial expanse of more than 160,000 acres, yielding the wildlife haven envisioned when the refuge was established in 1935 to protect migratory birds by conserving wintering grounds and an important migration corridor. Like each of America’s more than 550 national wildlife refuges, it is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In the visitors center display, the black bears catch the eye, and fittingly so, for Ursus americanus is a species that readily reveals the significance and quality of the habitat preserved by the refuge.

Now missing from much of the continent’s interior, black bears were so common in Arkansas at the time of pioneer settlement that the state’s original nickname was "The Bear State." Then, over-hunting and habitat destruction slashed the state’s bear population so drastically that by the 1930s it was estimated at less than 50, with most of those living within the swampy woodlands along the lower White.

Their numbers in Arkansas have recovered. It is estimated that now some 3,000 are spread across the state, in large part because of Arkansas Game and Fish Commission restocking efforts using bears imported from northern states. However, the lower White River population recovered on its own and in 1998 the commission began a program of relocating bears from that refuge into the Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge in extreme southern Arkansas.

The black bear is not, though, the only nor even the most recent proof of the criticality of the refuge’s habitat. In April 2005 it was announced that the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird thought for decades to have been extinct, had been rediscovered in the similar habitat of the adjoining Cache River National Wildlife Refuge to the north. Many believe it is only a matter of more thorough searching before the bird will be confirmed in the larger White River refuge, where automatic recording devices have already captured calls that may have been that of the ivory-billed.

Larry Mallard, manager of the White River refuge, appreciates the flurry of publicity and the hopes for a tourism boom that have accompanied the rediscovery, but he also believes caution should be exercised given the woodpecker’s tenuous-at-best existence within the state. "What happens,"Mallard asks, "if Elvis leaves the building?" He is using the codename given to the ivory-billed while scientists conducted a secretive search to confirm its presence.

"This refuge is a remarkable place and worth experiencing whether or not the ivory-billed is living in it," Mallard said. "Fishermen and hunters have known for many years how special the refuge is," he continued, "and now birders and others have become more interested in it."

The visitor center’s opening in 2003, the year the national wildlife refuge system celebrated its 100th anniversary, occurred in the nick of time to serve that rising public awareness, Mallard said. "The exhibits are making it possible," he said, "for anyone who visits the refuge to have a deeper understanding of what they are seeing."

An example is the center’s short film "Flood…The Water of Life," which reveals the importance of flooding to the refuge’s fishes and wildlife. "Who Eats Who" is the title of an exhibit that looks at the food chain within the refuge, while "Highways in the Sky" examines migration routes used by birds.

A large wildlife diorama depicts various habitats found within the refuge and includes specimens of animals that use them. Another brief film examines the management practices used on the refuge to ensure that it meets the needs of a wide variety of species. Eight species of mussels are exhibited side-by-side for comparison in "Below the Waterline."

"Discover the Night" is a true highlight of the center’s exhibit room. As visitors enter a small theater and take a seat on a bench against the wall, the lights dim and the stars and a nearly full moon appear overhead. Then, the noises of animals at night begin, with wall panels illuminating to reveal images of the insects, amphibians, birds and mammals making the sounds.

The $2.6-million center is located off Ark. 1 about a quarter mile south of St. Charles. In addition to the exhibits, its 10,000 square feet houses refuge offices, a small bookstore with other nature-related items operated by the non-profit organization Friends of the White River National Wildlife Refuge, an auditorium and an environmental education classroom.