“If it has fur or feathers and is endangered, people get excited,” Marian Havlik points out, “but if it’s something people don’t see or can’t relate to, there’s a tendency to feel it’s unimportant.” This is the case with the mussels Marian passionately works to preserve. Around the Mississippi River Valley, they call Marian the “clam lady,” a protector of these freshwater mollusks. Though Marian would change that title to “mussel lady” pointing out the difference between the two.

Marian has lived in La Crosse since 1952 andruns her own consulting firm, Malacological Consultants. She holds three federal and four state permits to collect endangered species, writes for professional journals and was featured in a New York Times article. The only degree Marian has earned is a Bachelors of Science in nursing from St. Francis School of Nursing, which she used working part-time at the alcohol rehabilitation center at St. Francis Hospital in Eau Claire. She says that she has no time for earning additional degrees for she is far too busy doing research and protecting the population of these Upper Mississippi mollusks. Always at work expediting projects, collecting and classifying mussels, lobbying governmental agencies, lecturing, and writing professional articles, Marian is a fascinating environmentalist.

Marian’s career as a malacologists, someone who studies mollusks, began in the mid-1970’s when her daughter was collecting shells for a school science fair project. Increasingly intrigued by these creatures, Marian’s curiosity and natural interest in research led her to libraries, museums, and of course, the river. At the age of 43, Marian became a licensed scuba diver and began pursuing her lifelong dream of researching the river ecosystem. She says that if she belonged to another world, it would be underwater. She became an outspoken advocate of the Higgins’ Eye Pearly mussel, which Marian explains are of importance as filter feeders in our waterways. They are also a source of food for fish, waterfowl and small mammals. Due to human activity, like pollution of streams, gravel dredging, commercial navigation and the dumping of untreated industrial waste products, the mollusks have been greatly reduced in species’ diversity and population size.

During the summer of 1975, the Army Corps of Engineers began dredging operations in the Mississippi River near Prairie du Chen. She wrote letter after letter to United States senators for Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, to public officials, to former President Carter, President Ford, and Walter Mondale to put a halt to this project. Her theme in many of the letters was that the Endangered Species Act of 1973 was, in the case of the Prairie du Chen Higgins’ eye, being ignored. Her concern was that the clam beds in the river would be surely damaged. There are 300 species of freshwater clams in the United States and about 40 of them are found on the Mississippi River. She succeeded in getting the attention of the State Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service. In 1975, Marian received a $2,100 Bush Foundation grant to Ohio State University for an independent study on naiad mollusks, freshwater clams. Marian feels her lobbying has helped get studies and surveys initiated, made government agencies more environmentally aware, and the Higgins’ Eye mussel protected by the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Now there can be no dredging unless the Army Corps of Engineers can prove there is no trace of the Higgins’ Eye mussel. She has made people more aware of clams and the important role they play in the Mississippi River. “If nothing else, we now know that Higgins’ eye lives in the river.”

The Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society (FMCS) presented the William J. Clench Award to Marian E Havlik, Malacological Consultants, in 2003, at the 3rd National FMCS Symposium. The award was “In grateful recognition of her longstanding commitment to the mussel fauna of the Upper Mississippi River system in the form of surveys, publications, and unwavering advocacy for this important national resource”.

A favorite memory of her work is the summer of 1997 when she spent nearly 13 continuous weeks on the Mississippi River working from Burlington, Iowa to Cottage Grove, Minnesota. Not many river biologists get to see that much of the Mississippi River in one summer. She hated to see those projects come to an end. Marian reflects that it wasn't a matter of the money; rather simply enjoying the work she was doing and being outside. One report on that project was well over 100 pages long.

Initially, Marian planned on a career in nursing and raising her five children; life presented a different road for Marian to travel. It was another science field that for her was more challenging than nursing. Since her first experience with the Mississippi River when she was only 12 years old, Marian fell in love with the natural beauty and knew she wanted to devote herself to science and research. She remembers reading Madame Curie’s biography at the young age of 10 and being fascinated by what she did as a female scientist. Later Marian realized Madame Curie was a women's libber long before that word was even coined. “I've always felt that you have to make use of the brains and gifts you have.”

Marian has given tremendously to the preservation of the river ecosystem. “Mussels are environmental indicators and we haven’t even begun to explore that whole subject yet.” It's up to the younger generation to get interested in preserving our world's environment, including our rivers and Marian Havlik is our inspiration.