Mississippi

Mississippi River refuges get $10 million for nature-based solutions to climate change

Published

2 years ago

May 24, 2024

Mississippi River refuges get million for nature-based solutions to climate change

A $10 million investment will fund seven projects aimed at making national wildlife refuge lands along the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers more resilient to climate change, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced earlier this month.

The projects, which span all five states that border the upper Mississippi, will emphasize nature-based solutions — in other words, working with the river ecosystem instead of trying to control it — to blunt the impacts of some of the river’s major problems, like flooding and drought. There are 11 national wildlife refuges along the two rivers, the largest of which is the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.

The funding comes from the Inflation Reduction Act. Part of it was rolled out last year to support projects on state-owned lands, including in Wisconsin.

The upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers are seeing the consequences of a warmer, wetter world, and the human-engineered infrastructure built decades ago, like the lock-and-dam system and levees, isn’t able to keep up. In particular, an almost unprecedented amount of water flowed through the rivers over the last decade, killing trees, degrading fish habitat and threatening to breach levees meant to constrain them.

These new projects are meant to help land managers think through those climate threats and adapt to what’s happening now, said Tim Miller, who manages the La Crosse District of the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.

Here’s what to know about what they’ll tackle.

Floodplain forests are a priority

More than $1 million will be dedicated to the project, “Building Resilience in America’s Big River Forests,” and an additional half-million will go toward restoring bottomland hardwood forest in Missouri.

Bottomland forests, also called floodplain forests, are located along major rivers. As their name indicates, they flood seasonally when the river floods. But along the upper Mississippi, more water flowing through the river and longer-lasting flooding events have inundated these trees more than they can handle, causing hundreds to die.

More: What to know about floodplain forests, a struggling ecosystem on the Mississippi River

More: A new technique could help save the Mississippi River’s floodplain forests: raising the forest floor

Work is ongoing to save them, but this money will allow the Fish and Wildlife Service to expand the range of that work to all 11 national wildlife refuges along the river in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, Miller said.

Staff will be curtailing invasive plant species that have moved into areas where larger trees have died and planting tree species that are better suited for today’s wetter conditions.

The funds will also help staff labor-intensive projects like these on refuges that have very few employees, Miller said. The national wildlife refuge system has struggled with chronic understaffing in the past decade.

Other projects will make room for the river

Some river engineering structures will get a facelift, or even a total overhaul, to deal with high waters. That includes Guttenberg Ponds in Clayton County, Iowa, where a levee protecting a wetland area from the river’s main channel has been degrading over time, repairs for which have been costly. The project will allow the degradation to happen and turn the area behind it into floodplain forest, Miller said.

“Instead of fighting the river with these levees we’ve had, we’re allowing it to naturally degrade over time,” he said. “It’s kind of a neat way of looking at it.”

Other engineering changes include replacing or raising the elevation of water control structures, which regulate the flow of the river, so they can hold more water, easing stress on the river, Miller said.

Wisconsin project focused on fish habitat

One of the projects funded is specific to Wisconsin: restoring Sam Gordy’s Slough in Buffalo County. Floods and high flows have brought more sediment into the backwater channel, making the area shallower and less suitable for fish and effectively cutting it off from the river’s main channel.

More: Climate change imperils the upper Mississippi River backwaters. Now nature needs human help.

The project will reconnect the backwater channel to the main channel by dredging, and install a sediment diverter so sediment can’t keep piling up, Miller said.

Work will start on most of the projects this year, he said, with the exception of the Guttenberg Ponds project.

Madeline Heim is a Report for America corps reporter who writes about environmental issues in the Mississippi River watershed and across Wisconsin. Contact her at (920) 996-7266 or mheim@gannett.com.

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Mississippi

Former federal attorney faces arson charge after two fires in Fondren

Published

9 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Former federal attorney faces arson charge after two fires in Fondren

A former federal attorney was arrested and charged with arson for two fires in Jackson, Mississippi.
The fires damaged a building and a dumpster at the Yana Club of Mississippi, a recovery community nonprofit.
The suspect, George McDowell Yoder III, has a history of previous arrests and was suspended from practicing law in 2022.

A former federal attorney was arrested and charged with arson after a building and dumpster were set on fire Friday, Feb. 27, in the Fondren area of Jackson, authorities said.

Jackson Fire Department Chief of Investigations Charles Felton said firefighters responded around 12 a.m. Friday in reference to a reported building fire and dumpster fire at Yana Club of Mississippi located at 555 Hartsfield Street.

Felton said fire crews arrived and found two separate fires in the Fondren neighborhood that caused damage to the Yana Club and the dumpster.

No injuries were reported.

After the fires were extinguished, a fire investigator was called to the scene. Investigators spoke with Capitol Police, who had a suspect detained.

Felton said the Jackson Fire Department Arson Division arrested George McDowell Yoder III, a former federal attorney, and charged him with first-degree arson of Yana Club and third-degree arson of the dumpster.

In 2021, WDAM TV reported Yoder had been a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi from 2009 to 2011. Yoder also ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Mississippi Court of Appeals in 2016.

According to a 2023 article by the Laurel Leader Call, Yoder was arrested in 2021 for residential burglary and faced multiple charges from 2021 to 2023. Yoder was also arrested in 2023 for arson charges, the outlet reported.

Documents from the Supreme Court of Mississippi also indicate that Yoder was admitted to the practice of law in the state in 1999 but later suspended in 2022 from practicing law for three years.

Court records show Yoder was found to be accepting fees from clients, abandoning them and then failing to deposit their retainers into a trust account. Yoder “commingled” his personal money with those of his clients and performed little to no work on a Madison County criminal case he was hired to resolve.

Jackson fire officials also said that a fire did not occur Friday morning at The Pig & Pint, a barbecue business located next to Yana Club.

Yana Club of Mississippi, a nonprofit organization, is described via their Facebook page as a “recovery community” that serves individuals seeking help with addictions.

The organization confirmed at 10:23 a.m. Friday via a social media post that the Yana Club building will be closed due to damages sustained from the fire.

“Due to the safety of our members, we will be closed through the weekend,” the organization stated. “We are working with [the] fire department and insurance to determine the best course of action. The building is currently deemed unsafe for meetings to be held. We will be in touch with updates when we have them.”

Pam Dankins is the breaking news reporter for the Clarion Ledger. Have a tip? Email her at pdankins@gannett.com.

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Mississippi

Renowned New York dance instructor visits Mississippi to recruit for summer program

Published

21 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Renowned New York dance instructor visits Mississippi to recruit for summer program

LAUREL, Miss. (WDAM) – A world-renowned dance instructor from New York visited Laurel Thursday to conduct a special class and do some recruiting for a prestigious summer dance program in the Big Apple.

Melanie Person, who is co-director of the Ailey School in New York, taught a master ballet class Thursday morning at Laurel Middle School.

It’s part of a three-day residency in the Magnolia State, organized by the Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience in Meridian.

She’ll teach two other classes Friday in Meridian before hosting an audition Saturday for a prestigious summer dance program at the Ailey School.

“I typically tour in about six to eight cities in the U.S., and I recruit dancers to come to our summer intensive, so part of this weekend, in one of the classes, I will be accepting students to come to New York for our five-week summer intensive,” Person said.

“We accept the dancers we like, and we see if they are able to come. The decision to come to New York for the summer is a big undertaking for families, so we just hope that they can do it.”

Registration is required for that audition, which will be held at the Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience.

To do that, click HERE.

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Mississippi

No. 12 Mississippi State’s Balance Shows Again in Road Win at Georgia Tech

Published

1 day ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

No. 12 Mississippi State’s Balance Shows Again in Road Win at Georgia Tech

Mississippi State has won plenty of different ways during this 15-1 start, but Wednesday night in Atlanta felt like one of those games where the Bulldogs reminded everyone why they’ve looked so steady all month.

It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t stress‑free, but the 8-3 win over Georgia Tech was the kind of road win that shows a team knows exactly who it is and what buttons to push when things get a little weird.

Alyssa Faircloth set the tone again, even on a night when she didn’t have her cleanest beginning. She gave up a game‑tying homer in the second, shrugged, and then basically disappeared Georgia Tech’s lineup for the next three innings.

Eight strikeouts in nine batters the second time through the order, back‑to‑back innings striking out the side. The only real hiccup came on another leadoff homer in the sixth, and by then she’d already done the heavy lifting.

And while Faircloth was settling in, the lineup did what it’s been doing all year: spreading the damage around.

Des Rivera wasted no time, jumping on the first pitch of the second inning and sending it out. When Georgia Tech tied it, Nadia Barbary answered immediately with a solo shot of her own. It wasn’t loud or flashy, but it was the kind of response good teams make without thinking.

The middle innings were more about pressure than power. Barbary worked a walk, Kiarra Sells split the gap for an RBI double, and Anna Carder did her job with a sac fly. Suddenly it was 4-1, and Mississippi State had the game exactly where it wanted it with Faircloth cruising, the lineup stacking quality at‑bats, and the defense staying clean.

The seventh inning, though, is where the Bulldogs turned a solid win into a comfortable one. Sells homered again, and then Rivera and Tatum Silva kept the inning alive long enough for Morgan Bernardini to drop the hammer. Her three‑run shot to center didn’t just put the game away; it capped off the kind of night she’s been stringing together for a week now. She’s 7‑for‑11 during her four‑game hitting streak and looks like a hitter who’s seeing everything in slow motion.

Peja Goold handled the final outs, picking up her second save and slamming the door on a Georgia Tech team that kept trying to make things interesting late.

What stands out most about this win isn’t the four homers or the 11 strikeouts or even the 15-1 record. It’s how routine it all felt.

Mississippi State went on the road, took a couple of punches, and never looked rattled. Rivera homered. Barbary homered. Sells homered. Bernardini homered. Faircloth dominated. Goold closed. It was the same formula, just in a different ballpark.

Now the Bulldogs head to Clemson for a weekend that should tell us even more about who they are. But if Wednesday night is any indication, they’re traveling with a lineup that can hurt you anywhere and a pitching staff that doesn’t mind carrying the load when needed.