Wild-rice expansion puzzling

Madeline Heim Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk
Apr 3, 2025
Apr 3, 2025

1 of 6

Wild rice is in the floating-leaf stage in June 2023 on the upper Mississippi River. The floating-leaf stage occurs before the plant matures.

Alicia Carhart/WDNR

A wild rice plant grows in September 2024 on the upper Mississippi River near Goose Island County Park in the town of Shelby, Wisconsin.

Madeline Heim/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Alicia Carhart peers during summer 2023 into a tall wild-rice bed on the Mississippi River. She’s a vegetation specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Alicia Carhart/WDNR

A wild rice bed grows in September 2024 on the upper Mississippi River near Goose Island County Park in the town of Shelby, Wisconsin. After disappearing for decades, wild rice is rebounding on parts of the upper river.

Madeline Heim/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A 1939 photo shows wild rice on Blue Lake in La Crescent, Minnesota, on the Mississippi River.

Upper Mississippi River National Fish and Wildlife Refuge

'It’s one of the most dramatic changes on the upper Mississippi,' Danelle Larson says. '(Wild rice) is everywhere.'

USGS

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Madeline Heim Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk

SHELBY, Wis. – If she closes her eyes, Danelle Larson can still remember how the stretch of Mississippi River in front of her looked, as recent as a decade ago. It was nothing but open, muddy water. Now it’s covered with impressively tall and thick beds of wild rice.

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Madeline Heim is with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri.