Naturalist: Louis Judice

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The following article, among eleven others, is part of the 2014 educational calendar produced by the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program (BTNEP) in Thibodaux. This calendar, a tidal graph calendar produced annually, typically presents information related to historic landmarks, wildlife, and culture of the area. This year's entries focus on Louisiana naturalists, from colonial times to the twentieth century. Written by BTNEP's Andrew Barron and reproduced for Country Roads readers with BTNEP's permission, these articles highlight the rich biodiversity of our state and the individuals who've spent their lives documenting and/or protecting it.

Louis Jacques Judice was baptized in New Orleans at St. Louis Cathedral on October 21, 1731. At 13, his parents died and his uncle, Captain Nicolas Judice, sent him to France in 1746 to learn a trade. He returned to New Orleans and married Jeanne Cantrelle, the daughter of a prominent businessman in 1752. Judice was the longest serving commandant of Spanish Louisiana, 1765-1796 (including the first Spanish governor Antonio de Ulloa). Judice and Louis Andry were directed by the third Spanish governor, Luis de Unzaga y Amezaga, to explore the “Lafourche des Chetimaches district,” and determine its suitability for settlement. Andry, Judice, and Judice’s eldest son embarked on the journey around March 15, 1772 in a small boat or pirogue.

Although the journey took about one month, Judice did not write a full report on the trip until 1786. He described 120 species: 56 birds, 16 fish, 16 mammals, 1 reptile, and 31 plants. The natural levees were small grasslands or prairies “one to two arpents wide,” (about 200- 400 ft) occupied by turkey, deer, wolves, prairie chicken, bison, cougar, and the Carolina Parakeet. Along the bayou “were plentiful feathered game of all varieties including ducks, wood ducks, mergansers, teal, white and grey ibises, and cormorants in great numbers.” He was the first to document hundreds of cormorants cooperatively pushing fish against shorelines. He described the region’s potential for agriculture and its drinking water problems.

Vegetation beyond the prairies consisted of canebrake- and palmetto-choked, bottomland-hardwood forests that gave way to huge expanses of ancient, cypress-tupelo swamps, bordered by buttonbush and cutgrass marshes. Non-dominant vegetation included tulip laurel, cherry laurel, black laurel, wild plum, black cherry, hawthorn, pecan, persimmon, sweet gum, sycamore, hackberry, creeper vine, cottonwood, white oak, red oak, live oak, water oak, black oak, acacia, holly, elm, wax myrtle, prickly ash, black walnut, and basswood. Judice and Andry’s survey led directly to the Canary Islander, “Islenõ,” settlement at Valenzuela (now Plattenville, Assumption Parish). By 1788, 16 years after their journey and initial report to Unzaga, the region had a population of 1500 people. Their account was one of the earliest and most comprehensive assessments of the Lafourche region.