Madison Parish is a parish located on the northeastern border of the U.S. state of Louisiana, in the delta lowlands along the Mississippi River. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,017. Its parish seat is Tallulah. The parish was formed in 1839. With a history of cotton plantations and pecan farms, the parish economy continues to be primarily agricultural. It has a majority African-American population. For years a ferry connected Delta, Louisiana to Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Vicksburg Bridge now carries U.S. Route 80 and Interstate 20 across the river into Madison Parish.
Tallulah is a city in, and the parish seat of, Madison Parish in northeastern Louisiana, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 6,286, down from 7,335 in 2010.
The Cache River National Wildlife Refuge is a 68,993 acre (223 km2) (2014) wildlife refuge in the state of Arkansas managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The refuge is one of the Ramsar wetlands of international importance under the Ramsar Convention signed in 1971. It is one of the most important wintering area for ducks and the largest remaining tract of contiguous bottomland hardwood forest on the North American continent. In 2005, a possible sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct, brought attention to the refuge.
The Tensas River is a river in Louisiana in the United States. The river, known as Tensas Bayou in its upper reaches, begins in East Carroll Parish in the northeast corner of the state and runs roughly southwest for 177 miles (285 km) more or less in parallel with the Mississippi River. The confluence of the Tensas and the Ouachita rivers, in Jonesville in Catahoula Parish, creates the Black River, not to be confused with Black Lake in Natchitoches Parish in north-central Louisiana.
The Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge is a 152,000-acre (620 km2) National Wildlife Refuge located in eastern North Carolina along the Atlantic Coast. It was established on March 14, 1984, to preserve and protect a unique wetland habitat type—the pocosin—and its associated wildlife species.
Bayou Cocodrie National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1992 to protect some of the last remaining, least-disturbed bottomland hardwood forest tracts in the Lower Mississippi Valley. These wooded wetlands, oxbow lakes, brakes, sloughs, and bayous, are inhabited seasonally by over 150 species of migratory birds, including forest-breeding birds, water birds, and waterfowl. The 15,155-acre (61.33 km2) refuge is located in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Vidalia, Louisiana. It is named for the state-designated scenic river which runs through its center.
The Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge is located about 30 miles (48 km) west of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and one mile (1.6 km) east of Krotz Springs, Louisiana, lies just east of the Atchafalaya River. In 1988 under the administration of Governor Foster the "Atchafalaya Basin Master Plan" was implemented that combined the 11,780-acre (4,770 ha) Sherburne Wildlife Management Area (WMA), the 15,220-acre (6,160 ha) Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge, and the 17,000-acre (6,900 ha) U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Bayou Des Ourses into the Sherburne Complex Wildlife Management Area.
Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge was established on October 27, 2000, as the 526th refuge in the United States National Wildlife Refuge System. It is located near the town of St. Francisville, Louisiana, which is 30 miles (48 km) north of Baton Rouge. The refuge was established to conserve, restore, and manage native forested wetland habitats for migratory birds, aquatic resources, and endangered and threatened plants and animals. Additionally, it was created to encourage the use of volunteers and facilitate partnerships among the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, local communities, and conservation organizations to promote public awareness of resources of the refuge and the National Wildlife Refuge System.
Lake Ophelia National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1988 to protect the Mississippi/Red River floodplain ecosystem. The refuge is located in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, east central Louisiana. The refuge is named for its most prominent water body, the 350-acre (1.4 km2) Lake Ophelia that was at one time a channel of the nearby Red River of the South.
Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1978 and is located in Union and Morehouse Parishes in northern Louisiana.
The Louisiana black bear, one of 16 subspecies of the American black bear, is found in parts of Louisiana, mainly along the Mississippi River Valley and the Atchafalaya River Basin. It was classified as 'threatened' under the U.S. Endangered Species Act from 1992–2016. The validity of this subspecies has been repeatedly debated.
Richard Pough was a major figure in American conservation for more than half of the 20th century. The impact of his work was so broad that he "seemed to be almost everywhere." He initiated efforts to purchase and preserve habitats at locations such as Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania, Corkscrew Swamp in Florida, Aravaipa Canyon in Arizona, and Congaree Swamp in South Carolina. Pough was born in Brooklyn, New York. Following in the footsteps of his parents, he graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1926, with a degree in chemical engineering.
Jefferson B. Snyder, was a lawyer and politician from the Mississippi River delta country of northeastern Louisiana. Snyder became a virtual political boss of Madison, Tensas, and East Carroll parishes; his leadership was rarely challenged, and politicians courted his endorsements.
Leonard Mason Spencer was a lawyer and planter from Tallulah, Louisiana, who was from 1924 to 1936 a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for Madison Parish, located alongside the rich farming delta of the Mississippi River.
The fauna of Louisiana is characterized by the region's low swamplands, bayous, creeks, woodlands, coastal marshlands and beaches, and barrier islands covering an estimated 20,000 square miles, corresponding to 40 percent of Louisiana's total land area. Southern Louisiana contains up to fifty percent of the wetlands found in the Continental United States, made up of countless bayous and creeks.
The ivory-billed woodpecker is a woodpecker native to the bottomland hardwood forests and temperate coniferous forests of the Southern United States and Cuba. The US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing it as extinct in September 2021, but this decision was withheld after two public comment periods and public hearings amongst ornithologists and conservationists. Habitat destruction and hunting have reduced populations so thoroughly that the species is listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on its Red List as critically endangered, by the American Birding Association as "definitely or probably extinct", and presumed extinct by NatureServe. The last universally accepted sighting of an American ivory-billed woodpecker occurred in Louisiana in 1944, and the last universally accepted sighting of a Cuban ivory-billed woodpecker occurred in 1987, after the bird's rediscovery there the prior year. Sporadic reports of sightings and other evidence of the persistence of the species have continued since then.
Ben Lilly Conservation Area is a 247-acre tract of protected area located in Morehouse Parish, Louisiana, USA. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) became the new owner in 2013.
Big Lake Wildlife Management Area, (WMA) also referred to as Big Lake State WMA, is a 19,231 acres (7,783 ha) tract of protected land located in Franklin, Tensas, and Madison Parish, Louisiana, owned and managed by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF).
Lake Bruin State Park is a state park in Louisiana located on the shore of Lake Bruin, an oxbow lake near the town of St. Joseph in Tensas Parish.
New Carthage, Louisiana, also known as Carthage Landing, was a 19th-century Mississippi River boat landing and village surrounded by cotton-producing agricultural land and undeveloped wetlands. New Carthage was located in, successively, Concordia Parish, Madison Parish, and Tensas Parish in Louisiana, United States. Destroyed by a combination of the American Civil War and the power of the Mississippi River, nothing remains of New Carthage today.
