Many scientists say loss of habitat, not a natural occurrence like flooding, is the real threat to wildlife. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources wildlife manager Ross Heir says the Red River Valley was once home to vast numbers of prairie and wetland species that now are gone from the valley floor. He points to the stuffed specimen of a handsome, long-legged prairie bird. Heir says adaptable species like deer and beaver still thrive in the thin line of cover along the rivers and streams of the Red River Valley, where they have been surviving floods and droughts for decades. The species facing an uncertain future are those hanging on in small prairie and wetland remnants on the far edges of the valley - species like the bobolink, which still lives in places like a DNR refuge southeast of Grand Forks.
Heir points out the bird in a field guide.
The refuge is wet and rocky, a patch of prairie surrounded by potato and beet fields. Bobolinks in their yellow and black suits perch on the swaying grass tops and rise, singing, into the air. It's like a little Noah's arc, its plants and animals safe, not from the devastation of this spring's flooding, but from the rising sea of civilization all around. Return to Flood of 1997 .