On Thursday, Feb. 25, Mississippi University for Women’s Gordy Honors College Forum Series welcomes Kelby Ouchley, Louisiana public radio host, author and a leader in the Mollicy Farms floodplain reconnection project.
After serving as a biologist, federal game warden and manager of National Wildlife Refuges for 30 years, Ouchley began writing and narrating “Bayou-Diversity,” a radio program on conservation and wild flora and fauna for Louisiana public radio. His radio essays have been collected in “Bayou-Diversity: Nature and People in the Louisiana Bayou Country,” published by LSU Press.
At Mollicy Farms, Ouchley has been a leader in the effort to reconnect 25 square miles of former floodplain forest to Louisiana’s Ouachita River, part of the Mississippi River Basin. The project involves restoring habitat and removing portions of a 17-mile-long, 30-foot-tall levee and is believed to be the largest floodplain reconnection project in North America.
Among Ouchley’s other books are “Flora & Fauna of the Civil War: An Environmental Reference Guide,” which uses letters and diaries of the period to explore personal encounters with the natural world during the war, and “Iron Branch: A Civil War Tale of a Woman In-Between.” He has also been awarded the Governor’s Conservationist of the Year award from the Louisiana Wildlife Federation.
Ouchley will visit Columbus with his spouse Amy, author of “Swamper: Letters from a Louisiana Swamp Rabbit,” in which Swamper writes about his life and the ecology of the bottomland hardwood forest. At 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 25, she will read from the book at Storytime with Mother Goose at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library.
The Ouchleys live in north Louisiana on the edge of the D’Arbonne Swamp.
Kelby Ouchley’s presentation at The W is free and open to the community and begins at 6 p.m. in Nissan Auditorium. For more information, contact the Honors College at [email protected] or 662-241-6850.
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