Wild Oklahoma

By David Gerard
Phoenix Staff Writer

August 27, 2007 10:43 am

— The Red Slough earns its name.
Drop over the low hills into the Red River Valley southeast of Idabel, and the farmland stretches like an endless flat. In mid-August, the heat and humidity tend to be near suffocating.
You are trapped between the Ouachita Mountains to the north and the hills of Texas to the south. You are in a low country, the sloughs of a muddy, wildly, but idly, meandering stream.
You are also in a rich land, and in its midst is the Red Slough Wildlife Management Area, the uppermost reach of fauna from the tropical Gulf of Mexico.
“This is a premier birdwatching spot in Oklahoma,” David Arbour, a wildlife technician with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, will tell you. “Close to 300 species have been seen here.”
Arbour knows. He records their presence and counts them — as much as possible.
Arbour said he’s estimated 35,000 birds roost in the rookery along Otter Lake. So many birds nested there this year that their droppings caused a fish kill.
It didn’t kill all the fish in Otter Lake, nor other animal life in the water.
A common moorhen family, two clutches this year, paddles the lake, and Arbour says that in the early morning hours, an alligator cruises snout and head just above water.
Yes, this is alligator country. Southeast Oklahoma — the remote corner only a few miles from neighboring Arkansas and Texas — is the only spot in the state where you will see alligators in the wild.
About a dozen individuals of Alligator mississippiensis make Red Slough their home, according to Robert Bastarache, district biologist with the U.S. Forest Service in the Ouachita National Forest.
Red Slough is cooperatively managed by the Forest Service, the state wildlife department and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. The wildlife area also has received some funding for major projects from Ducks Unlimited, a private nonprofit group.
Bastarache said a spotlight survey this spring counted eight alligators, but past counts have numbered a few more.
Red Slough’s big draw, however, is its birds.
“We just love it,” said Jeri McMahon, a member of the Indian Nations Chapter of the Audubon Society who visited the Red Slough on Tuesday and Wednesday. “It’s the best thing to happen in Oklahoma for birdwatchers. The birds that seldom came up into Oklahoma began coming when the Red Slough was built.”
The birds McMahon referred to include two exotic species, the wood stork and roseate spoonbill. McMahon said she spotted both this past week.
Southeast Oklahoma along the Red River was drained and farmed beginning in the 1960s. But the rice farms began to end in the mid-1990s, and the government agencies took over nearly 6,000 acres and began converting it to its original wetland state. Some landowners near the Red Slough also have allowed some of their land to be converted to wetlands.
Bastarache said the Red Slough averaged 187 birder days from 2000 to 2006. The 2007 figures are currently at 176 birder days, with birders coming from 31 states and two foreign countries. Those are only the birders who have reported their activities to the Forest Service, so the figures don’t represent actual numbers.
McMahon and other birders said the unusual wet weather this spring and early summer dispersed the birds so that the unusual species birders go to see at Red Slough aren’t present in the numbers they usually are.
They just take more patience and persistence to spot. But McMahon said now is the time to go see them.
Watch a video here.
Red Slough
The Red Slough Wildlife Management Area covers nearly 6,000 acres in McCurtain County in southeast Oklahoma. It is six miles south of Haworth and about 20 miles southeast of Idabel.
Primitive camping is limited to parking areas. There are five viewing platforms strategically located on the area for wildlife and habitat viewing.
Contact for Red Slough is the U.S. Forest Service, (580) 286-6564.
All areas are walk-in only.

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