On the Cover: "Three Little Birds, Shell Ginger"
A painting by Michael Guidry
When New Orleans artist Michael Guidry was growing up, his parents’ backyard was flush every summer with the cascading sprays of Shell Ginger, its spicy perfume permeating the air.
Today, the flowers arise in Guidry’s paintings whenever he wants to incorporate a sense of “home” in a particular tableau. It is fitting, then, to discover in “Three Little Birds” the blooms framing some of Louisiana’s most iconic birds, Great White Egrets—beauties that survived the Victorian era’s plumage fad (to the detriment of an estimated ninety-five percent of their population) to become one of our home’s most successful and symbolically important bird populations, a testament to the power of concentrated conservation efforts.
In this year’s “Our Natural World” issue, we hone in on the ongoing work of wildlife conservation in Louisiana: from the global success story of the American alligator, to the avante-garde exploits employed to usher in new generations of the oh-so-rare whooping crane, to 900 acres of land in Folsom where herds of the world’s most critically endangered exotic species—Pere David’s deer, giraffes, and bactrian camels—roam free.
In these stories, we meet scientists and wildlife enthusiasts who are dedicating their lives to ensuring the animals that are so central to our region’s identity endure, often by seeking out new ways to make our world a better home for them.