A flood of effects: Federal legislation continues to worry nature enthusiasts years after ruling, with dust yet to settle on changes

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - Bill Rowe has been birdwatching for over half a century, but birds are not the only thing he’s witnessed: changes to the landscape and its inhabitants have fluctuated over the years — some for better and some for worse.

On a cloudless day in late March, Bill Rowe stands by a bank of water and listens. What he hears is not uncommon on its own, but as a whole, it’s becoming endangered.

A redwing blackbird.

A cardinal.

A robin.

A red-bellied woodpecker.

It was a late Spring morning, Bill lists these birds as the calls he hears while at Marais Temps Clair Conservation Area.

“So, you can hear any place you stop at this time of year, you’re going to hear six or eight or 10 different kinds of birds. And as we did this whole visit this morning, I would say we’ve probably heard, out of the birds we found, we probably heard 30, or more.”

Bill and his son Matt Rowe are frequent flyers at Marais Temps Clair Conservation Area, which stretches across hundreds of acres of St. Charles County, to look and listen for birds.

“I was like many little boys,” said Bill, who has been bird watching for over 60 years. “I was interested in dinosaurs and then snakes and stuff like that. And then somehow, I kind of transitioned into birdwatching.”

The father-son duo shares a love for birdwatching, as well as for education. With Bill working as a teacher and in other various administrative roles in St. Louis Public Schools while in the workforce, and his son Matt currently working as a fourth-grade teacher.

Education and birdwatching are intertwined for the two, and something they often share with others. Bill often leads trips to conservation areas educating those interested in birds and birdwatching, and Matt has been known to take his students on field trips to try out birdwatching.

“One of the reasons I love being out here is just, you have a good sense of what you’re going to see, but there’s also a lot of randomness. Like something that shows up that you had no idea,” said Matt. “And then aside from the occasional, big surprises, it’s just peaceful.”

The span of Marais Temps Clair stretches 918 acres and includes various types of terrain, ranging from woodland to marsh and floodplains. This variety and access to water make it a prime spot for migrating birds to rest on their travels and for other woodland creatures to try to catch a flying snack. With migration times varying between species and types, it makes it a popular spot year-round for those seeking to see birds and animals.

The land was once a private duck club, but in 1979 it was acquired by the Missouri Department of Conservation. The land is still open for hunting and fishing during the respective seasons, including amenities like a wheelchair accessible duck blind for public use. It is open year-round for “passive” activities like birdwatching and hiking.

“I can’t say unique because it’s wherever there’s a good, good-sized wetland, you’ll find many of the same things,” said Bill. “There’s some other kinds of wetland birds that are more difficult to find than the ducks and geese, they’re in relatively good shape.”

“Other ones like bittern, or rails, birds like that that are marsh birds. That kind of marsh habitat has really declined over, let’s say, the past 50 to 100 years in the state. And so has prairie land,” said Bill. “So, grassland birds and marsh birds are among the ones that are sort of in the most trouble numerically.”

When Bill and Matt go bird watching, they use an app called eBird to track what birds they see, hear their calls, at what times, and where. The app helps track the prevalence of various bird species nationwide.

While at Marais Temps Clair, Bill and Matt said they encountered 40 different species of birds, totaling over 350 birds between the two locations visited at the conservation site.

Near the northern entrance of the conservation site, one of the birds spotted was a bald eagle, a well-known raptor species and national symbol.

The bald eagle is also a story about how conservation safeguards can intervene in a species’ becoming extinct. Bill talks about how he has seen a rebound in numbers through environmental protective measures, such as eliminating DDT, which was taken to help the bird after its numbers dipped, causing the eagles to become a species of concern.

The rebounding of bald eagle numbers through the years is a testament to how shifts in how the nation’s landscape is treated can affect the beings living within.

But birds and flowers are not the only things both specialists and conservation enthusiasts are trying to keep a presence within nature sites. Its visitors.

“The people who are just active would like to hike, bird watch, fish, hunt. We have great places for that. This is one of them. I hope people are able to come out and take advantage of some,” said Matt.

Both the Missouri Department of Conservation and the Missouri Wetland Agriculture Initiative say they will continue to work with farmers and landowners to try to mitigate further loss of wetlands, as concerns loom in light of the 2023 Sackett vs. EPA ruling - a ruling which would make areas like Marais Temps Clair Conservation Area no longer federally protected and able to be converted into farmland legally.

Wetland sites like Marais Temps Clair have never had state-level protection within Missouri, leaving the question of what will happen to it and other such places. Conservationists and everyday nature enthusiasts alike hope that regardless of whether land stays public or privately owned, it remains accessible and free for animals and people to roam.

“It’s been great, especially since COVID, because we’ve seen bird watching take a real spike. And here in Missouri, being in the middle of the Mississippi Flyway, we just have a real wide diversity of birds and plants and animals,” said Matt. “We just want to keep those spaces safe and available for everyone to go see.”

As of July 2025, the future of the United States’ remaining wetlands remains under legal scrutiny.