Return to Rockefeller Refuge

Imagine the coast of Louisiana as your spine, as though you were reclining against the Gulf of Mexico. Your head rests against Sabine Lake, your tailbone tickled by the Mississippi at Port Eads. Atchafalaya Bay resides near your navel, and the Rockefeller Refuge, the subject of this brief discourse, lies between your shoulder blades, straddling Cameron and Vermillion Parishes.

Years ago, notable Louisiana photographer C.C. Lockwood told me to go to the Rockefeller Refuge. “They’ve got birds,” he said, “thousands of birds. Photographer’s dream. You should go.” So, I went, with a brick of Kodachrome, a Nikon camera, and more spare time than an expectant father handing out cigars.

I saw things at the Rockefeller I never expected to see. I saw a young alligator catch and release, with much persuasion, a not-so-young cottonmouth. I saw a platoon of fiddler crabs in a standoff with a leopard frog. I saw a young buck in velvet against a backdrop of willowy cattail reeds. I saw birds of every color, size, and wingspan spill across the sky, crosshatching beneath the stain of the fading Sun. It was a place of magic in those long gone days.

Following the Deepwater Horizon fiasco this past summer, I was overcome by a sense of dread, however, fearing the Rockefeller Refuge would be no more. For months since the well was plugged, I had considered returning to ‘report’ on the carnage the refuge had sustained, though could not bring myself to do so.  Every time I mustered the nerve to approach it, I was at once met with a fear that I would see things I wished not to see. Televised images of pelicans lathered in oil, blinking through doomed eyes, was more than I could take in my own living room. I clicked them away.

This is the trouble with our species. If we see something troubling, we just click it away.

So, how could I possibly countenance returning to a place I once beheld as sacred, in view of the travesty I would likely find?  But then my practical side forced upon me a duty to which I felt I’d been called. Whatever the circumstances, whatever I might find needed to be met head on. I needed to shelve sentimentality, and man-up. So in late January I made preparations, and a phone call.

I got Tom on the other end. Tom Hess. Tom is the resident Biologist Manager of the Rockefeller, and when I mentioned my interest in coming back to take pictures in the wake of the BP oil spill, he was emphatic in addressing the fact that the Rockefeller Refuge had been spared BP’s ignominy. “We had no impact,” Tom said. “None at all. We’re ‘open for business.’ Come on.”

I did. I was pleased by what I found.

The Rockefeller Refuge lies along Highway 82, west of Pecan Island, two hours from Lafayette. It is a dwindling spot of marsh on the southwest coast of Louisiana, now comprised of some 74,000 acres, though when granted to the State of Louisiana by the Rockefeller foundation in 1920, it encompassed some 86,000 acres. Tidal erosion has clearly made an impact on the Rockefeller. Fourteen percent of the refuge has been lost in less than a century.

This in itself is tragic, because the refuge is a vital component in the summer migration of countless species of birds, swarming north from Central and South American locations. Of the more than nine hundred species of birds known to inhabit North America, more than half have been sighted in Louisiana, and of those, something approaching 200,000 birds annually rely on the refuge as a familiar interval, following their trans-Caribbean peregrination.

Of these, biologists Carrie and Brac Salyers, who live on the refuge, offer that the variety of birds making their way to the Chenier ridge, a ribbon of oaks which dominate the high ground at the edge of the refuge, is unequaled anywhere else in the Mississippi flyway.  “We have every sort of avian life you can imagine,” Brac told me. “We have several species of orioles, tanagers, buntings, warblers, grosbeaks... even the occasional yellow-headed blackbird.

“The Chenier ridge is their first rest stop, after crossing the Gulf, so with swings in weather patterns such as we’ve experienced in recent years we get cross over, in terms of species from differing flyways. It’s difficult to predict what one could expect to see here, year after year.”

Sadly, the ridge, which lines the north rim of the refuge, along Highway 82, is also under environmental assault.  The brine from saltwater intrusion, in part as a result of the deteriorating barrier marsh, has taken its toll on the inland oaks. And as the oaks go, so too shall the migratory patterns of countless birds seeking sojourn at the terminus of so lengthy a flight, compelling them to adjust.

All is not gloom, however.  Carrie Salyers was quick to point out that for the first time since 1950, whooping cranes will soon return to the area, as part of a captive breeding program, fostered by the International Crane Foundation. By mid-February, ten captive bred whooping cranes (Grus americana), of a total world population of 475, will have been released in the White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area, just north of the Rockefeller Refuge, through a cooperative agreement with the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, in Laurel, Maryland. The hope is for the White Lake, Rockefeller Refuge complex to allow for the reestablishment of a permanent, non-migratory flock, within the native wetlands where whooping cranes once flourished. And with the support of the public, their presence, and interest in sharing in this dream, the people of Louisiana and adjoining states can aid in effecting a change—a change in living history, toward the prevention of yet another human induced extinction.

So, arise from your mid-winter slumber. The Super Bowl is history, the Packers Fans (same colors as BP) are insufferable, the sun is aflame, and your binoculars are calling.  Get thee to the coastal marsh, and witness the splendor that is the Rockefeller Refuge.

Details. Details. Details.

The Rockefeller Refuge is maintained by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries and is located at 5476 Grand Chenier Highway (Highway 82), Grand Chenier, La. Tour groups are encouraged, year around, though portions of the refuge are closed from the first of December until the first of March.  Fishing and crabbing opportunities abound.  Some overnight accommodations at the refuge are available on a first come, first serve basis, but you must call to make arrangements in advance. (337) 491-2593.