Tennessee

TENNESSEE

There are no historical records for Tennessee, though this is generally thought to reflect mostly how rough and tumble and poorly-collected western Tennessee was during the 19th Century. It is believed that Ivorybills must have surely occurred in the Mississippi bottomlands, as they were recorded from adjacent states.

In spite of being "the greenest state in the Land of the Free," present-day TN has few extensive remnants of mature coastal plain bottomland forests. I've only picked out one as looking like potential ivorybill habitat:

1. Hatchie River from near Hebron to about highway 51, plus a narrow strip continuing downstream connecting to some forest patches aong the Mississippi -- the "Hatchie Bottoms." Actually a quite nice, wide, continuous, and mature band of forest, its biggest strike is its isolation from other good habitat.

There are other smaller bottomland areas along the South, Middle, and North Forks of the Forked Deer River above Dyersburg and below highway 45. I didn't see any large areas around Reelfoot Lake, though if you combined the small forest fragments there with the larger upland bluff forest north of Dyersburg, and the North Fork Forked Deer River swwamps to the east, collectively it is a moderately large patch of forest. Once again, the Mississippi mainstem forests are highly fragmented.