A debate is expected this summer over changes in how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manages the Missouri. American Rivers expects the debate to determine whether the river is a healthy habitat that appeals to visitors or a sterile shipping channel for a relatively small number of grain barges. This is when the public is going to have a chance to make its voice heard on the management of the Missouri. American Rivers said the Missouri is in danger of losing two bird species, the least tern and the piping plover, and the pallid sturgeon, an ancient fish. Dams and channelization have left the river without much of its backwater habitat, the group said.
Conservationists say the Missouri is in critical condition.
Americans should rally to save the river as the Corps prepares to release its plans for dam operations this summer, Smith said. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said the river level needs to be higher in the spring and lower in the summer to save the threatened species. Those changes would force a split barging season, which shippers oppose. It also could mean lowland spring flooding, which worries farmers. The state of Missouri is fighting the changes, fearing they would disrupt barging along the Missouri and the Mississippi.