Percy Viosca Man ahead of his time

[Duck Butter]

He was ridiculed for thinking like this but almost 90 years ago, there was someone who was actually against the levees

The following quotes are taken from a paper that Viosca presented at a national meeting in Hartford, CT on August 8, 1927,* four months after the Mississippi flood that devastated south Louisiana and inspired John Barry’s well-known book Rising Tide
…Thus man, by harnessing our rivers, has created new conditions of existence in the formerly wet areas, this resulting in a decided decline of the aquatic natural resources. Several million acres formerly suitable for fish and other aquatic wild species have been made unfit for such creatures, yet are serving no other useful purpose…(and) they are subject to the ever present menace of disastrous floods…
…It is chiefly as a result of the building of levees, and not as a result of shooting and trapping, that our aquatic birds and mammals have suffered…Just as our aquatic birds and mammals have suffered by our present and past means of flood prevention, reclamation and drainage projects, so have our fisheries, both marine and freshwater.