Wild Arkansas
Control and conservation on the Arkansas River.
By Richard Ledbetter
AGFC biologist Chelsea Gilliland prepares to release a paddlefish back into the Arkansas River.
From tempestuous to tamed
Rising near Leadville in the Sawatch Range of the Colorado Rockies, the Arkansas River winds across four states before emptying into the mighty Mississippi in the Arkansas Delta. Of the Arkansas River’s 1,469-mile length, 320 of them cross our state flowing from the Old West outpost of Fort Smith to what once was Napoleon, the ill-fated Mississippi River community that was washed away in 1874 by the same vibrant watercourse that had led to its settlement forty-two years earlier.
The Arkansas River derives its name from an alternate appellation for the Quapaw tribe, “Akansa.” The name “Quapaw” is itself a European pronunciation of the native word “Ugahxpa,” meaning “Downstream People,” while Akansa translates to “Southwind People.” Both reference their southward migration from the upper Mississippi River region to settle in present-day Arkansas. Early French explorers associated the Native Americans who resided at the mouth of the watercourse with the river. Over time the vital waterway became known as the Arkansas, and the region officially adopted the same moniker when a portion of the Missouri Territory was ceded to form Arkansas Territory on March 2, 1819. As the 25th state, Arkansas entered the Union under that name on June 15, 1836.
While the river proved an inroad to early explorers plowing its waters in flatboats and canoes, shifting channels and sandy shoals made early steamboat navigation treacherous and unreliable. In its natural state, the Arkansas could run so low during dry periods that one could walk the shallow depths from bank to bank, while the rainy season often brought intense flooding.
With 20th century engineering advances, many mighty rivers were dammed and diverted to control wild variations in seasonal ebb and flow. The Arkansas’s long reputation as an unpredictable navigation route was in opposition to economic advantages gained via reliable transportation and facilitating commercial agriculture. As such, the river’s days as a wild and onerous watercourse were drawing to an end.
Rivers run, money talks
Dedicated on June 5, 1971, the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System (MKARNS) sought some semblance of taming the wild Arkansas through channelization (dredging a deep channel for commercial barge traffic) combined with a series of 18 locks and dams, 13 of which lie within our state. Although the system offers a degree of control over the river breaching its banks, its primary purpose is not flood control but assisting navigation.
Stretching all the way from the Arkansas’s confluence with the Verdigris River at Port Catoosa, Oklahoma, to the mouth of the Mississippi, the MKARNS affects the lower 445 miles of the mighty river, with only the final 13 miles — from the Wilbur D. Mills dam to its confluence with the Mississippi — flowing free.
In 2022, Congress allotted $92.6 million to improve navigation and bolster commerce on the river. The funding is earmarked to deepen the Arkansas River navigation channel from a 9-foot depth to 12 feet.
Supporting 40,000 jobs with an annual economic impact of $5.5 billion on our state’s revenue, the MKARNS is a vital avenue for commerce and industry.
Phase 1 of the project includes surveying the channel in its current state, especially following the dramatic changes made to the riverbed during the once-every-200-year flood of 2019.
A second objective is discerning how best to modify dikes to funnel the river’s current where it can naturally scour silt from the channel.
Efforts will likely be focused on pools 10, 8 and 5. Pool 10 is the 34,300 acre Lake Dardanelle, pool 8 runs from Morrilton to Conway, and pool 5 flows from below Little Rock to Pine Bluff. These areas contain problem spots that are prone to greater silting where deepening should prove most effective. Other than regular maintenance, no actual dredging is intended during the initial phase.
“You tickle a river — you take action one step at a time, monitoring the results to see what works.”
— Chelsea Gilliland, AGFC Large River Fisheries Biologist
Money isn’t everything
Chelsea Gilliland is an Arkansas Game and Fish Commission large river fisheries biologist who joined the wildlife agency in 2018. As a fisheries biologist, she is one of many professionals tasked with protecting the ecology of Arkansas’s large rivers, including the Arkansas. This includes balancing a healthy Arkansas River ecosystem with economic and practical considerations that often take precedence when decisions are being made with regard to the vital waterway.
“You tickle a river,” she says, referring to unforeseen impacts from major engineering projects, explaining that “you take action one step at a time, monitoring the results to see what works.”
Gilliland expressed how the Army Corps of Engineers is working cooperatively with the AGFC regarding impacts on the fishery and recreation. When deepening a riverbed by dredging, relocation of the removed material is of vital importance to the ecosystem. Most of the sand and gravel is pumped to shallows along the riverbank, which may seem practical but can have significant impacts.
“We (AGFC staff) reviewed the river mile by mile,” she says, “and provided comments on where access to the river could be impacted, along with areas to avoid in-water disposal of dredged material, such as spawning sites and vegetation beds. Those locations are important for biologically significant species like paddlefish, alligator gar, buffalo, catfish, bass, and crappie.”
While channelization is paramount for consistent navigation on the Arkansas River, flooding can also impede commercial traffic and often prove quite impactful to riverine ecology.
The great flood of 1927 is the grandaddy of Arkansas River floods, yet it was surpassed in sheer water flow by the flood of late May and early June 2019. In addition to early snowmelt at the headwaters of the Arkansas, atmospheric moisture was unusually high, lending to repeated heavy downpours. The 12 months leading up to the event were the wettest since record-keeping began in 1895.
The initial rains associated with the flood began on May 18. High volumes of surface runoff and water dumped from overtopping reservoirs, swelling the bulging river to near all-time levels. Not since 1927 had the river seen such swollen, swirling currents. The further downstream, the more impactful the situation.
According to Gilliland, the flood’s effect on the fishery depends on timing, duration, and the lens you are looking through. She explained how normal river flow during May is around 40,000 to 60,000 cubic feet per second (CFS), but for two weeks in the spring of 2019 the river sustained volumes of 300,000+ CFS. All dam gates were open, leaving a naturally flowing, wild running river.
“We’ve seen high-water years in past decades,” Gilliland said, “but none like 2019.”
Floods impact different fish species in different ways, with some varieties harmed by a flood event and others actually benefiting. Two weeks of high-level flushing in late May has a significant impact on spring spawning. Adult fish are less affected because they’re more mobile and can hunker down behind dikes and in backwaters. Fresh hatched fingerlings are more susceptible, getting swept away in the torrential currents.
“Many commercial fishermen say the Arkansas in 2024 and ’25 has been the best they’ve seen during their entire careers.”
High-water events can actually have many benefits for the river’s ecosystem. During open-river conditions the watercourse becomes fully connected to floodplains. River-to-floodplain connectivity maintains ecological health, reduces flood risk and improves water quality. Floodplains act as sponges, lowering velocity and volume of floodwaters while reducing erosion. Furthermore, they naturally filter water, reducing sediments in the river and creating rich habitat for wildlife, fish, and birds, while also adding tons of fresh sediment into the system that provides nutrients to stimulate the food chain. Fish populations that might be negatively impacted by open-river conditions will rebound more quickly with abundant food.
At the same time, these conditions provide opportunity for invasive species, such as nuisance silver carp, to expand their range and compete for resources with native fish like buffalo and paddlefish.
While floods bring some benefits to fish habitat even as they disturb it, 2020 and ’21 were also above-average flow years, so the fishery didn’t immediately get a break for full recovery.
“For a couple years following the 2019 event,” says Gilliland, “we saw fewer number and size of fish in the river, with the greatest impact on our two most popular sport fish, bass and crappie. Because they are sight feeders, fast-moving, murky waters make finding food more challenging for these classic Arkansas River species beloved of recreational anglers.” AGFC biologists noted the population dip but now are seeing progress after a couple of years with near normal flow.
Gilliland says that for some species, flood conditions are mostly beneficial.
“Fish more adapted to such conditions, like blue channel and flathead catfish, along with buffalo and gar, love the flood because they are used to muddy water, high flow and high sediment,” she explains. “As bottom-feeders, they lay on the riverbed, open their mouths and gorge.”
Furthermore, some desirable species need connection with the floodplain to spawn. While hundreds of miles of revetments keep the water within its banks, floods reconnect the river channel back to its floodplain, which is requisite to produce their prodigy. Species like gar and buffalo are incredibly long-lived (some buffalo have been found to be 100 years old), so they don’t need to spawn every year and can survive durations between floods. One good flood per decade maintains their numbers.
That can be borne out ecologically and economically, as along with sportfishing, the Arkansas River is likewise an important commercial fishery, with species such as buffalo making up a large portion of commercial catches.
“Many commercial fishermen say the Arkansas in 2024 and ’25 has been the best they’ve seen during their entire careers,” says Gilliland when describing the positive effects of flooding on commercial fish species.
“In February 2022, AGFC began requiring mandatory commercial harvest reporting,” she explained. “Commercial fishermen are now required to report numbers and pounds caught by the 15th of each month. The Arkansas is second only to the Mississippi for highest production of buffalo and catfish.”
Other potential factors weighing in on the long-term state of the Arkansas River include several McClellan-Kerr dams up for hydroelectric generation licensing. This proves significant because electric generation can restrict fish migration, modify water temperatures, and alter crucial habitat. The licenses have a 50-year lifespan and the AGFC is already actively engaged in the process to protect fish populations in the Arkansas River.
