National Parks Traveler

It’s the reptilian equivalent of a battle tank. Weighing upwards of 250 pounds for males at maturity, alligator snapping turtles have a powerful beak that can take off careless fingers, and a carapace featuring three spiny rows reminiscent of the ridgeline of plates atop a stegosaurus. North America’s largest freshwater turtle, these reptiles appear as throwbacks to dinosaurian days when to survive you needed not only body protection but to be something of an apex predator.

Frightening-sounding, for sure, and increasingly unusual today due to declining populations that have the snapping turtles proposed for listing as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, these turtles are just one of the unique species that call Alabama's Mobile-Tensaw watershed home. 

Alabama "is clearly the most biodiverse state east of the Mississippi River. By almost any measure," Bill Finch replied when asked to describe the vast watershed that empties into the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile. And then Finch, who worked with the late E.O. Wilson on conservation issues in Alabama and today is the founding director of the nonprofit Paint Rock Forest Research Center in the state, dives into the details.

"It's the center of fish diversity in North America. I always like to say you can take almost any stream in Alabama and there would be more fish species in a mile of that stream than in the entire state of California. In most states. In most streams, the fish diversity would be higher than the entire Pacific Coast from Mexico up to Canada," he went on. "It's the center of oak diversity in North America, north of Mexico. It's the center of magnolia diversity in North America. It's the center of hickory diversity, globally. It's the center of sunflower diversity, globally. It's the center of turtle diversity in the Western Hemisphere. It's the center of crawfish diversity, for people who care about crawfish — and we do — of almost anyplace in the world. It's astonishing. One-hundred species of crawfish, and still counting."

Alligator snapping turtle/Gary M. Stolz, USFWS

In sheer numbers, the Mobile-Tensaw region, which counts at least nine significant rivers and drains a watershed of about 260,000 acres, is home to 126 fish species, 46 species of mammals, 69 reptilian species, 30 amphibian species, and at least 300 bird species, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama. Forests at various elevations reach into the sky with bald cypress, tupelo gum, longleaf pine, water hickory, laurel oak and live oak, bitternut hickory, white oak, and even spruce pine, just to list some of the species. 

Closer to the ground and in the water are endangered Alabama red-bellied turtles, loggerhead sea turtle (at Mobile Tensaw Delta's mouth), Southern painted turtle, Mississippi mud turtle, and even the gopher tortoise. Winging through the skies, among the trees, and on the water are blue-winged teal, Common and Purple Gallinules, Red-breasted mergansers, Reddish heron, Great Blue heron, Prairie warblers, Yellow-throated warblers, Carolina chickadees, American kestrels, Sharp-shinned hawks, Pileated woodpeckers, Swallow-tailed kites, Yellow Rails, and White ibis. 

Not only is Alabama rich in biodiversity, but much of that diversity is at risk. The state ranks third in the country in terms of threatened and endangered species, with 151, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Dams built for hydropower generation, clearing of longleaf pine forests, roads, and habitat loss all play a role in wildlife declines in the state. Those impacts all underscore the need for protected areas to prevent continued loss of biodiversity.

A Biodiversity Hotbed

A large measure of Alabama's biodiversity is held within the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, a roughly 185,500-acre patchwork of swamp, marsh, open water, and bottomland forests that Wilson considered to be the Amazon of North America. Hidden in the delta due to its remote location away from the main rivers and streams is a bald cypress tree with a 27-foot girth and rising more than 100 feet into the sky. It's a stark reminder of the cypress forests that once were common in the state.

According to the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, "[A]reas of moist longleaf pine forest surrounding the Delta include what many believe to be the greatest concentration of plant species in North America, ranging from 40 to 60 species per square meter. At that scale, that is among the most diverse floral habitats globally. ... Alabama, along with Georgia, supports the eastern United States’ greatest concentration of oak species. Much of that diversity is centered in areas like the river bluffs or the Red Hills region overlooking the Delta and the Alabama River. A single hillside may support 20 species of oaks, seven species of magnolia, six or seven species of hickory, a half dozen species of rhododendron, along with dozens of other species from temperate beech and maple to subtropical palms and titis.

A live oak in the shell mounds area of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta/©Beth Maynor Finch

"The region is a crossroads between the eastern and western Gulf Coastal Plain regions, regions counted among the global hot spots for endemism—species that exist nowhere else—and total biological diversity."

It's a region robust in cultural history, one that includes a Pensacola culture community established around AD 1250 on an island near the mouth of the delta north of Mobile. There are shellmounds considered to be some of the earliest forms of architecture in the country.

"This is a vast watershed that has Indigenous history, very important connections to multiple tribes, cultural and natural wonders," said Elaine Leslie, who, as chief of the National Park Service Natural Resource Stewardship and Science Biological Resources Division before retiring, explored the delta. "It has a Civil War battlefield that's untouched, really, and it needs protection."

The late Ed Wilson, shown here with Bill Finch during a trip to the delta, called the area North America's Amazon/Beth Maynor Finch

How Best To Protect It

But should that protection come from inclusion in the National Park System? There are two other land-management agencies in the United States, the National Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, as well as state-based agencies that can offer protection. But which is best at preserving natural resources? That's one question to grapple with as the Biden administration pushes to protect 30 percent of nature by 2030, while the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation believes we need to protect 50 percent of the planet's land and seas for nature.

In the case of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, there already is a combination of federal, state, and private landowners working to preserve the region. But there also are threats pushing on the region. Seven years ago PBS Newshour did a segment on the delta, and at the time industrial pollution was cited as a major impactor of the region. Today, however, it's development, said Finch.

"I would say industrial pollution is now way down the list. It's there, but it's not the big one," he said. "Everybody likes to make that the big one because nobody likes to smell their own stink. But the truth is, it's development. It's occurring and it's occurring right on the edge of the delta. And it has probably destroyed tremendous opportunities for protection of the delta. Everybody says, 'Oh, well, let's let's protect this little wetland area in the middle.' But everything that's coming into that wetland is coming off of the yards and the driveways of the people that are now building around the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. We're losing that at a rapid rate."

The National Park Service has exhibited an interest in the region. Back in 2017 it published a State of Knowledge report that described the region’s unique geology and hydrology, its rich and varied vegetation, flora and fauna, and evidence of human settlements from thousands of years ago. Prior to that report, back in 1974,the Mobile-Tensaw River Bottomlands were designated a National Natural Landmark. A handful of National Historic Landmarks also dot the region.

The 2016 PBS Newshour report touched on opposition to adding the Mobile-Tensaw region to the National Park System, though Finch is not so sure where things stand today.

"There was opposition, clearly opposition, to developing a park in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta," he said. "And the claim was, and it's a fair claim, that the state already had protected a large part of the interior of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. And so a fair question might be, do we really want to have more cypress and tupelo if we've already protected much of that already? So the question was, would it be duplicative? And no, I don't think so. I think there would have been some really great opportunities for public access and for interpretation that simply aren't available now. But we haven't we haven't been back to test that [opposition] in the Mobile-Tensaw."

A longleaf pine/Beth Maynor Finch

Finch sees a variety of ways of offering Park Service protection for the area. It doesn't necessary have to be designated as one large national park, he said. One example is the Black Belt National Heritage Area designated earlier this year in northern Alabama. Drawing its name from the region's rich black soil, the heritage area overseen by the National Park Service touches 19 counties and is intended to enhance preservation, interpretation, and marketing of unique cultural, historical, and natural assets in the area.

"That creates a cultural and landscape identity for a place and it allows that place to work closely with the National Park Service to develop opportunities there for tourism, for protection for many other things," Finch pointed out. "So heritage areas are all across the country that can be based on many things. And they're really neat. They don't always involve owning land. And in this case, it didn't. But it did help to facilitate a very good argument that allows us to engage with the National Park Service, if we can over the next next few years, and begin to see what are the opportunities for actual National Park Service involvement in the landscape."

According to Finch, the National Parks Conservation Association has been working to develop the potential in the region to forward the discussion of possible inclusion in the park system, "and they definitely have the ear of people in the Park Service."

"I think the potential is there. I think you have to go into it the right way. I do think there will be politics," he went on. "I think there are ways to to avoid that, the political issues, if it's done smartly, and if we recognize that the diversity is throughout the entire basin and not just in the delta.

"I think the delta will probably be a little bit of a hot potato from a National Park Service standpoint for a while. But that's okay, we've got a lot of work to do there. And we've got some other fabulous places that really need protection, perhaps more than the delta itself needs protection, because the delta gained so much from the protection of places around it," said Finch. "I think there's a lot of opportunity there, and I do think there is an interest in the Park Service. And I think we've got a lot of work to do to make sure that the Park Service, that we wave our arms enough that the Park Service pays attention and I think that's happening. I think there's a lot of potential there. I'm very excited about it."

Listen to the Traveler's conversation with Bill Finch about the Mobile-Tensaw Delta.