Costello, David F.
David F. Costello once worked for the Forest Service. He also is a photographer turned author.

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The golden plovers on their northward migration seemed at one time like a vast river of birds flowing from an inexhaustible source. Audubon on March 16, 1821, watched the shooting near New Orleans and estimated that forty-eight thousand golden plovers fell that day. The Prairie World, 1969

 

The early-day hunters were not nature lovers: they sought only to kill, mostly for the market. Ibid.

 

On the original undisturbed prairie, ponds and lakes served as a water bank and tended to keep the water table high enough that droughts did not always devastate the landscape. Now we are learning that drainage contributes to flooding and rapid drying of the land. Ibid.

 

Rather than holding water where it falls, drainage bleeds the flow into creeks and rivers, often exceeding their channel capacity and flooding agricultural lands, towns, and cities. Ibid.