If you are curious about the unintended ecological impact of altering the Wacissa ecosystem, consider this excerpt from George L. Thurston III's 1976 report on the Wacissa for the Canoe Trail Atlas:

"Two centuries ago, open stands of virgin longleaf pine grew on the stony upland north of the extensive hardwood hammock at Nutall Rise. West of the Wacissa, a wild swampy pineland was sprinkled with outcroppings of chert. The whole region of some 400 square miles (1,000 km²) swarmed with dear, bear, bobcat, wild turkey and bobwhites, as well as migratory birds and waterfowl by the billions. The limited use made of the river prior to the Civil War, for barging cotton to Newport from Jefferson County plantations, largely ended after the war and the area remained essential virgin. Late in the nineteenth century, the Wacissa area became well-known to ornithologists because of ivory-billed woodpeckers which were then fairly common there.

In 1930 the entire Wacissa watershed was clear-cut by timber companies which sold the pine and bald cypress lumber. The grades on which they built their tram roads still criss-cross the area, forming the basis for most of the dirt roads which now provide access to the river. Removal of the forest had remarkable results. When naturalist, Herbert Stoddard Sr, visited the area in 1932 after the absence of some years, he reported the entire ecology of the lower river was "drastically changed." Instead of the shallow, clear stream he had once visited, he found it running high and dark in all seasons. Apple snails, which depend on clear, lime-laden water, survived only in the upper reaches of the river near the springs. Birds such as limpkin and egret which feed on the snails, had become as scarce as the snails."