A new documentary exploring the vast wilderness of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta had its Mobile premiere at the historic Saenger Theatre on Dec. 3, drawing attention to one of the largest river delta systems in the country and the environmental pressures it faces.
The film, titled “America’s Amazon,” runs just under an hour but covers vast ground, both literally and figuratively. The delta itself spans roughly 300 square miles and more than a quarter million acres, stretching from the Causeway near Mobile north to the Grove Hill area in Clarke County. It is considered one of the most biologically diverse river systems in North America, and the film sets out to show why that diversity matters and what threatens it.
The documentary had its public debut at the Fairhope Film Festival on Nov. 8, where it drew positive reviews before its screening for a Mobile audience at the Saenger. It was written and co-produced by longtime environmental journalist Ben Raines, who spent 13 years covering the region’s ecology and natural resources before leaving the newspaper business earlier this year to become executive director of the Weeks Bay Foundation, a nonprofit focused on preserving coastal Alabama habitat.
Much of the film’s footage draws on stories Raines chased over the past decade, brought to life with sweeping aerial shots of winding creeks and stream banks shrouded in morning fog. Alligators and snakes make appearances, including one scene of a snake swallowing a frog, but the film also captures rarer sights. Cameras follow a biologist coaxing an endangered Red Hills Salamander out of its burrow with a cricket dangled on a wire, and revisit the rediscovery of the Rusty Gravedigger, a crawfish species once believed extinct until it turned up in a bayou near a Daphne sewage treatment facility a few years ago.
Manatees drift beneath the murky surface during their seasonal migrations from Florida, and newly hatched pelicans, still featherless, bob awkwardly in search of food. The film also revisits a 15,000-year-old submerged forest documented roughly 10 miles offshore and 60 feet underwater in the Gulf of Mexico, along with a hollow cypress tree near Rice Creek measuring more than 27 feet in diameter, spared from logging only because loggers had no use for it.
The delta is shown through all four seasons, from its spring bloom to its winter floods. In one scene, Baldwin County real estate developer Pat Ogburn navigates a boat through flooded timber to what he calls a “hidden lake,” a stretch of water with no other people in sight and, by his account, excellent fishing.
Around the midpoint, the tone shifts. More than a century of unchecked logging scoured the delta and filled it with runoff, the film explains, while development along its edges compounded the damage. Native mussel species have been wiped out and much of the lower delta’s seagrass beds have disappeared. Chemical plants upstream have deposited mercury and arsenic into the watershed, which researchers believe may explain why the local osprey population reproduces at two to three times lower a rate than osprey in the Florida panhandle.
The delta has survived those pressures but has not thrived, according to the film, in part because dams throughout the state have altered its natural hydrology. Migratory fish species have declined as they lose access to historic spawning grounds further upstream. The film also highlights the state’s limited environmental enforcement, noting that the agency responsible acknowledged its budget and staffing fall far short of what would be needed for robust oversight.
“We have laws on the books that address these issues but they aren’t enforced in any meaningful way,” Raines said following the Saenger screening. “ADEM is underfunded by the state.”
Raines said the most immediate threat to the delta comes from sediment runoff, an invisible but corrosive force that can smother river bottoms and bays over time, pointing to the decades-long degradation of Daphne’s D’Olive Creek and bay as an example. While state funding for environmental protection remains limited, Raines said he hopes some of the hundreds of millions of dollars in criminal fines stemming from the 2010 BP oil spill could eventually be directed toward restoring and protecting the delta.
Following its Mobile debut, “America’s Amazon” is scheduled to air four times on Alabama Public Television in January. Raines said he hopes the film eventually reaches state lawmakers and finds a place in grade school science curriculum.
“The delta is an incredible resource and the time is ripe to make some changes,” Raines said. “I think we have a world class piece of nature here and we need to do what’s required to protect and conserve it.”