'Voices of a Flyway' Episode 4: The Bottomland Forests

Episode 4: In this episode, we take our first look at modern agriculture on this Flyway. Timber companies in North Louisiana and Eastern Arkansas, like we’ve seen before, clear cut trees all the way off the landscape here, but this time they put something ...entirely different in its place. We’ll get a rare glimpse inside the forgotten forests that covered this place before farm country was farm country. We’ll meet the farm families who became the custodians of a new land of soy and corn. And discover how farming’s evolution into yet another one of America’s billion dollar industries has taken a different kind of toll on community in the heartland. To learn more about the project, visit www.voicesofaflyway.com/explore to start exploring our 6 interactive story maps that feature more of the stories, photos, and videos of the project! Funded by an Explorer grant from National Geographic, our team - a soundscape recordist, an audio producer, and a wildlife photographer - traveled from the Louisiana coastline to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota with the 2019 spring songbird migration. We visited six at-risk ecosystems along the route to uncover: 1. Why each of these delicate ecosystems is so critical to bird migration. 2. The infinite ways that people living in these areas share connections to the natural world. 3. What stands to be lost as these ecosystems vanish?