This summer, the USFWS and The Nature Conservancy in Louisiana plan to breach a 17-mile levee that surrounds 25 square miles at the Upper Ouachita River NWR in northeast Louisiana. The project is the largest floodplain reconnection and reforestation in the United States.

As of May 19, extremely high flood waters on the Ouachita River are threatening to cause the levees to fail, which would postpone and alter the partners’ plans to reconnect the river to its floodplain.