The rivers in the region have always been important to the people living in the area.

Native Americans frequently fished these waters and hunted animals such as deer and bison that came to the water’s edge.

When European settlers first arrived, they found the abundant fish and game living nearby to be a valuable food source. Early writings about the area describe eight bison being hunted along Duck Creek in the winter of 1792. Some of the fish caught in the area’s rivers were huge, including a 200-pound pike caught on the Muskingum in July 1788.

Ohio residents hunted most of the game to extinction. Human pollution has polluted the waters and caused declines in fish and bird populations

Today, after decades of efforts to clean up the nation’s waterways, the rivers and streams in our own backyards are teeming with a diverse array of life on, above, and below their surfaces. There are also a wealth of birds, amphibians, and fish that can be found along our area’s waterways.

Longtime readers of The Marietta Times have noticed that I often combine my love of the water with wildlife photography. As a result, you’ve probably seen dozens, if not hundreds, of wildlife photos I’ve taken on different waterways and waterways over the years.

My preferred shooting platform is a kayak. It gives me the ability to sneak up on things. I have had wildlife sneak up on me more than once. For example, while paddling down a tributary of the Little Hocking, my daughter and I disturbed an eight-antlered buck sleeping a few feet away. The buck jumped, and I admit, we both jumped.

At a different time in the same area, a large spider decided to fall from a tree directly into my wife’s boat. I managed to pick it up and throw it into the water. It immediately walked across the water and tried to climb back into the boat. I didn’t know spiders could walk on water. Another time I was paddling in a shallow part of Little Hocking and hit a fish. The fish almost jumped into my boat and I almost jumped out of the boat.

Often, I notice something before either of us gets spooked. Last spring, I did a photo story about George Washington’s trip down the Ohio River in 1770. I was standing on the bridge near the confluence of the Hocking River and the Ohio River when a crow started chasing a bald eagle, both of them talking quite loudly, not so loudly as to scare off a pair of turtles sunning themselves on a log just above the bridge. Sometimes you get lucky. All four end up in The Times or The Parkersburg News and Sentinel.

The Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge consists of 22 islands, including nearby Buckleys Island. The refuge is home to not only hundreds of species of fish, but also a wide variety of mammals, dozens of different species of mussels cling to the rocks around the island, and a wide variety of birds fly overhead, some of which use it as a rest stop on their north-south migration. You can see many of these if you take a trip around the island. The nice thing about canoeing on the river is that you are close to the surface of the water. You can easily see schools of small fish swimming in the grass that grows about 20 feet from the Ohio River Levee.

While trying to photograph an interesting root in Muskingum the other day, I looked down and saw a two-meter gar hanging about a meter below.

The abundance of fish populations has led to the formation of a diverse bird population that feeds on fish and other creatures living near the water.

Bald eagles, great blue herons, and hawks are now commonly seen in the area.

A few months ago a hawk flew over my car along the Ohio River carrying a large snake. I thought “Wow, I haven’t seen this in a long time.” The next day, the same thing happened at the same place. Must have been feeding time at 7:59 a.m. It was close enough to my car so I was happy to close the sunroof.

There have been numerous improvements to public river access in recent years. The new Parkersburg Ohio River Trail is one example. The millions of dollars that the State of Ohio has committed to improving river banks, not only in Marietta but also in several other nearby communities, will undoubtedly allow more people to enjoy the natural beauty that we often take for granted.

When people enjoy something, they tend to help look after it. Please do your best to give the wildlife you encounter the space they deserve. Remember, their ancestors were here before ours.

Art Smith is the online manager and can be reached at [email protected].