Endangered Ecosystem Used to Cover the Southeast

Vast thickets of bamboo for acres on end filled with colorful, rare birds isn’t what comes to mind when people picture the American Southeast. 

Canebrakes are thickets made up mostly by Arundinaria gigantea, popularly known as river cane, giant cane, or American bamboo. These canebrakes used to cover an estimated ten million acres of land throughout the Southeastern US but today only cover about 1% of that original land. 

While these plants still exist in very small groups and can be found in the woods throughout the Southeast, it is rare to find them at a scale and height large enough to be classified as a canebrake ecosystem. Therefore, canebrakes are considered a critically endangered ecosystem.  

The loss of this ecosystem is attributed to increased fire suppression and control, the loss of controlled burning, and the clearing of land for development or agricultural use. 

“Canebrakes are an early-successional habitat that is maintained by fire, so without fire they transition to forest. In the southeastern United States frequent summer thunderstorms are a natural cause of fires,” states an article by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “Native Americans were thought to have conducted prescribed burns to encourage its growth.”

Cherokee, Choctaw, and other Southeastern indigenous cultures make traditional artisan tools and art using river cane, such as baskets, woven mats, and fish traps. Organizations such as the Revitalization of Traditional Cherokee Artisan Resources (RTCAR) recently emphasized the need to restore and conserve these plants to continue and preserve cultural practices. 

The loss of this ecosystem is theorized to have been a major factor in the extinction and endangerment of many unique native plants and animals such as the Carolina parakeet, the Alabama canebrake pitcher plant, and the Florida panther. 

Incredibly, canebrakes were also found to be a major potential tool of environmental restoration. 

According to Friends of the Cache Watershed, “Canebrakes have also been shown to be effective buffers along streams and rivers, trapping sediments and nutrients from agricultural and other surface runoff. Ongoing studies at Southern Illinois University (SIU) show that a mature (30-year-old) canebrake was found to reduce groundwater nitrates, reduce nutrients in surface runoff and reduce sediments by 100% within a 10 m buffer of the stream.” 

This is a very significant finding as agricultural intensification has led to environmental degradation. If there was a way to grow canebrakes around southern agricultural fields, it could significantly reduce agrichemical runoff into public soil and water. 

However, there’s a reason that this has not yet been done. River cane is notoriously difficult to grow and transplant.  

“Several characteristics of cane make transplanting difficult. Cane flowers infrequently and, even when it does, seed production is inconsistent; therefore, there is no reliable seed source. Additionally, if seedlings do develop, they are often fragile and grow slowly, taking years to mature,” states the Friends of the Cache. 

Mississippi State University was met with difficulty when trying to restore canebrakes to improve water quality. In experimental plantings by the university, no concrete results could be obtained because only 1.2% of the transplanted seedlings survived after one year. 

But there is no reason to give up hope; there are many organizations actively working to restore canebrakes and discovering more about this unique ecosystem every year.  

Major organizations include the Rivercane Restoration Alliance, RTCAR, SIU, and the Chatooga Conservancy.