In early 2024, Michael Fedorov traveled to Tookabum Creek in York County, Alabama. The environmental anthropologist was there to help plant 300 stems of river cane, a bamboo plant native to North America, in an eroded, degraded strip of wetlands: “gnarled” and “vicious” territory, according to Fedoroff. If successful, this planting will be the largest cane restoration project in Alabama history. He and his team buried the stems in the ground, propped them up with hay, walked away and hoped for the best.
A few days later, rain fell in the area and the river level rose 9 feet. “We were terrified,” Fedorov said. He and his team raced back to the site, expecting to find bare ground. Instead, they found that the river reeds had survived, as had, crucially, the creek bank.
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Rivercane formerly covered streams, rivers and swamps in the southeast from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Mississippi Delta. Thick yellow stems and feathery leaves reached heights of 20 feet. into a sky so dense that riders on horses would rather travel around than risk passing through it. In the ground beneath the reed beds, rhizomes—gnarled stems just below the surface of the soil—stretched out to cover acres.
When Europeans settled the lands that would become North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama, they cut down trees and vegetation to make way for agriculture and development. Pigs ate the rhizomes of the river cane, and cows chewed the developing shoots. Now, thanks to this dramatic upheaval in the landscape, more than 98 percent river cane left. Of these many dense stands, called reed beds, only about 12 remain in the entire country, Fedorov said.
But as the Tookabum Creek project demonstrated, river cane was an important defense against the devastating effects of floods. This extensive network of tough underground stems held soil and riverbanks in place more effectively than other vegetation, even when rivers flooded. And as the South faces growing disasters caused by climate change, such as Hurricane Helen last year, a small and dedicated network of scientists, volunteers, local stakeholders and landowners is working to bring the plant back.
During Helen, the few waterways that were covered with river cane fared much better than those that weren't, according to Adam Griffith, a river cane expert at the NC Cooperative Extension Cherokee outpost. “I saw the devastation of the rivers,” Griffith said. He considered abandoning his involvement in river cane restoration, but after the hurricane he recommitted himself. “If there was native vegetation here, the creek bank would be in much better shape,” he said.
These enthusiasts are ushering in a “renaissance of the cane,” according to Fedorov, who directs the University of Alabama program that runs River Ditch Restoration Allianceor RRA, a network of river cane advocacy groups. RRA and its allies are replanting river cane where it once flourished, maintaining existing cane beds and stands, and educating landowners and the general public about the benefits of cane. In addition to these rhizomes saving waterways from devastating erosion, river reed also provides important habitat for native species such as the cane moth and filters nitrates and other pollutants from the water.
“When people start to accept the cane into their hearts, wonderful things happen,” said Fedorov, whose team now has $3.8 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to work on river cane projects in 12 states in the Southeast.
Large restoration projects like this often involve collaboration with many large stakeholders: the Tuckabum Creek project, for example, is tied to the RRA, logging and land management company Westervelt, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. River cane enthusiasts have emphasized that tribal consultation and participation are essential to reintroducing the plant to the landscape. River cane not only provides environmental benefits, but also plays a cultural role for the tribes that was lost as the plant declined.
Historically, indigenous peoples of the Southeast used river cane to make baskets, blowguns and arrows, but many artisans have now turned to synthetic materials for these crafts, says Ryan Spring, a historian and member of the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma.
When Spring began working with the tribe 14 years ago, no one knew much about the ecology of river cane, he said. Now Spring is actively involved in reintroducing river cane to the cultural and ecological landscape. “We’re building a community, getting them out, teaching them about the environment,” Spring said. “Many people are into basket making, and now they are using river cane to make baskets for the first time.”
Expansion of EBCI cooperation
There are challenges to the dream of restoring river cane to its former prolific glory in the Southeast. One is education: river cane, for example, is often confused with invasive Chinese bamboo, meaning landowners and managers usually don't think twice about removing it. Another barrier to restoration is the cost and availability of river cane plants. They are not easy to find in nurseries and can cost $50 to $60 per plant or more, according to Laura Young of the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.
But Young found a way around this problem. She works on habitat and riverbank restoration in southeastern Virginia, and six years ago she wanted to plant reed brake along the river near the tiny town of Jonesville. The cost was prohibitive, so Young pioneered the method now known colloquially as the “cane train.” She collected pieces of reed rhizomes, planted them in soil-filled sandwich bags, and then started growing reed beds from propagated cuttings—all for $6.
Fedorov noted that the cane method has one major drawback: Different varieties of river cane are better suited to, say, wet or sunny locations, so transplanting cuttings that grew well in one area may result in a pile of dead plants in another. In his lab, researchers are working to sequence the genomes of river cane so they can compare the characteristics of different plants and select the best varieties for different locations. But, Young added, although the distribution method is imperfect, it is cheap, simple and better than nothing. Of the 200 plants in her original project, 60 took off.
“Rivercane is kind of like investing,” she said. “It's not a get-rich-quick scheme. You just have to invest the time and money every year and it will pay off exponentially.”
The Reed Train also offers volunteers and private landowners the opportunity to participate in stream bank stabilization with minimal investment. Yancey County, North Carolina is home to numerous creeks and creeks that suffered severe erosion during Hurricane Helen. This spring, the county government, in collaboration with several state and local groups, led a group of volunteers to river reed restoration project. They collected thousands of rhizomes, contacted landowners along the county's devastated waterways and planted nearly 700 shoots, a process they will repeat in 2026. “The county really showed up,” said Kira Albert, recovery coordinator at The Beacon Network, a disaster recovery organization that helped lead the project.
This is part of the power of a solution like river cane planting: it is an effective and simple way for ordinary landowners and volunteers to improve the health of the landscape around them. “When we think about climate change, there is a lot of doom and gloom,” Fedorov said. “We become paralyzed. But we are trying to take a different approach. We cannot go back to a pristine past state, but we can imagine a future ecology that is better.”
