The Death of the Driftless Area (Iowa’s last untouched land).

It’s hard to under emphasis the importance of Iowa’s Driftless region from both a historical and current ecological perspective. It feels like 3/4 of the state simply doesn’t know it exists, or has never taken the time to get to know it.

Yet it is the home, no the heart, of Iowa at its finest I would argue. Most of Iowa as we know it today has been plowed into oblivion, there is little left to recognize of what Iowa once was, or could be, is most of the State, save for the gentle rolling hills of corn that never ends. If you close your eye’s you might be able to envision the tall grass and beauty that once was this landscape.

Not so with the Driftless Region.

It’s easy to see what those early French explorers fell in love with a few hundred years ago. Vast deep wooded valleys with clear cold streams thought the midst, along with massive hills and views that sweep down the mighty Mississippi. If you blind folded an outsider and told them to guess, Iowa would be the last choice.

Deer, turkey, coyotes, eagles, foxes, heck even more recently bears have made this there home for thousands of years.

It would take you a lifetime to explore every hollow and stream in the Driftless of North East Iowa, and you should. Because it’s about to be no more.

Think about that for a minute.

• Decorah (arguably the most beautiful Iowa town)
• Trout fishing streams and surrounding forests
• State Forests
• Numerous trails
• Mississippi River valley

The Driftless in Iowa is dying. Fast.

You may or may not be aware of the steady decline of every part of Iowa’s ecology. From the water quality, to the ability to acquire more public lands, the agricultural roots are deep in Iowa and that same power that has destroyed the prairies is now systematically destroying the Driftless with no mercy, and it’s happening fast.

Let me give you one small example from just a few short days ago.

I was finishing up 1 mile hike along Grannis, a public trout stream with surrounding public lands and forests that has been the quintessential “Driftless Area” show piece for decades. I met a fly fisher who voiced his absolute dismay and anger that this beautiful area he’s been fishing and hiking is now completely gone and done. Destroyed.

Let me prove it to you. This picture is from 2023.

This area (Grannis) was showing signs of trouble, but still boasted a mostly crystal clear stream and immaculate surrounding forest that was a pleasure to walk and explore, beautiful flowers, tall trees, plenty of animal life.

This should all look perfectly normal to you, that is a good thing. A nice clear stream running through woods and grass with overhanging habitat that supports a variety of plant and animal life and leads to a healthy ecosystem.

To be honest, this is what makes the Driftless … the Driftless. In the past this this part of Iowa hasn’t really been easily “farmable,” which explains its current existence in a mostly unaltered state.

Well, you can guess the rest of the story. With the incredible rise in value of Iowa farmland, combined with the beauty of the Driftless in and of itself, humans will find a way to exploit such a place for profit, and in the process destroy this area this is void of formal protections.

As we’ve seen before, the little protections offered by the DNR owning public land no longer matter as they actively ignore and abandon places like this.

This is that same stream and area two years later.

To summarize the what you can find if you go this area today is a place destroyed.

• cows have been brought into the middle section of the stream.
  • they have destroyed the integrity of the banks. There is no grass or shrubs left.
• mink and beavers have dammed the stream unchecked, undermining and mudding entire sections of the stream.
• the stream now has more the allowable amount of e coli
• the stream is no longer clear and clean, it’s literally green with algae
• the surrounding forest and grass has been destroyed by cattle.

Now if you drive into the Driftless, instead of seeing those once empty hills of grass and forest glens, you see new house builds, cattle lots, and the like. E coli problems? Duh.

It’s hard to put into words to someone reading this and just not being there in person to experience these drastic changes, it’s hard to communicate to people separated by true experience from the importance of what’s happening.

What’s happening is for the most part irreversible, or would take decades to undo. Stream and forest reclamation doesn’t happen overnight, and the fact that this has happened in the last few years indicates things will get much worse, for a much longer period of time, before it gets any better.

Like it or not this sort of semi-gradual destruction doesn’t happen overnight, nor can it be simply stopped on a dime. Changes would have to be addressed in both the public servants minds, as well as private landowners in these areas. Generally speaking, there is blame for everyone and you cannot simply point to a single person(s), department, or law that bears the totality of responsibility.

If Iowa as a whole, the people, the DNR, the legislator, the powers that be, simply do not care about the land we live on, then nothing will change, the once mighty Driftless region will continue to be developed, both by agriculture and individual landowners, until it’s simply an extension of central Iowa.

To say that the DNR person(s) in charge of these Driftless county areas are helpless to stop these changes is not true. One person who cares and is in charge of a few counties could make a huge difference in saving places like Grannis.

Again, compare what once was Grannis, the essence of the Driftless, to the algae and mudded up banks that exist now. What, you think this is just a one off? Don’t kid yourself.

The Diftless is Dying.