Nurtured into a Natural State

Matt Conn has spent the past ten years restoring a once-destroyed wetland

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Sometimes, developing property can mean returning it to how it used to be. On sixty-seven acres near Lydia in Iberia Parish, conservationist Matt Conn has spent the last decade undoing the effects of his fellow man’s impact on the wetlands.

The once-diverse marshland, thriving under the canopy of mature oaks, cypress, and tupelos, had all been cleared to the ground when Conn first came upon it, left fallow and overgrown with invasive species. Today, under his care, the dense, quiet stretch of property is once again home to a great diversity of ecosystems and colored by the beauty of Louisiana’s native plants: sunny goldenrod, kelly green brush, and burnt brown thicket. It yields to the seasons, as it’s made to.

Even the banes of Conn’s existence, the invasive Chinese tallow trees (more commonly known as “chicken trees”) that have filled the space, turn orange. He can’t deny they’re pretty. But he’s taken most of them down by bush hog, machete, and helicopter.   

“When I purchased the property, the first year, it was basically an invasive forest—just tens of thousands of tallow trees,” said Conn. “We had to experiment. By far, helicopter spray killed the most—” ninety-five percent, in fact.

The first time Conn saw his future acreage was in print: as a work assignment for the company he was working for at the time. A self-professed bug, plant, and bird “geek” with a degree from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in Renewable Resources and Environmental Sustainability—Conn’s expertise lies in understanding how various wetland systems function and identifying jurisdictional wetlands. “A byproduct of this is that we can locate, identify, and help anyone who intends to impact wetlands to get the proper permits and mitigate [that impact] properly,” he explained. “We also work on coastal restoration projects, private wetland restoration projects. We help locate, plan, permit, monitor, and manage many mitigation banks for clients.”

[Read an article from 2016 about a wetlands restoration project involving treated sewerage here.]

Today, Conn is the Director of Operations and owner of Schoeffler Energy Group Environmental, LLC. But in 2009, he was working as the supervisor of the ecological division for another large company when the MA Patout Sugar Mill hired him to restore the protected wetlands they had been planning to use for growing cane. Their practices of draining and clearing the land without permits had caught the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency and other regulators, and the owners were obligated to consult SEG for a restoration plan.

At some point, the mill owners decided to mitigate their financial losses, and put the land up for sale at a price that Conn couldn’t pass up. The hook, though, was that the massive restoration would now be his responsibility. “I knew what needed to be done because I was the consultant ... but I had to invest time, sweat, and labor into physically doing restoration myself.”

It was a commitment that would have to wait, though. Conn said he thinks there was a day and a half’s time between buying the property and leaving the country for his second deployment to Baghdad. “It was a year before I was back home and actually got to do anything to it,” he said.

[Read about artist and naturalist John Taylor's work to preserve the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle here.]

Almost twelve years since he purchased the property in January 2010 and eleven since he started restoring it, the Acadiana Native Plant Society dubbed Conn’s property a gold-level Louisiana Certified Habitat in 2021. The land is now home to more than 18,000 native trees among three distinct ecotypes: tidal fresh marsh, tidal flooded pothole bottomland hardwood, and coastal prairie. On his blog, called “Turtle Boy and the Birds,” Conn catalogues every species he discovers, which as of 2021 include more than two hundred native plant species, 195 different kinds of native birds, ten species of frogs, nine of snakes, three of turtles, and much more. The creatures and plants that thrive there have fairytale names: sedge wrens, false foxglove, ironweed.

It’s all brush and thicket in the summer, or as Conn said, “a hot, thorny, overgrown, deer, fly, and mosquito-infested country,” but on first impression, the property’s appearance is deceptively dormant. Conn introduces new species every year; development is constantly taking place, just not in the ways we are accustomed to seeing.

“The cool thing about native stuff is if you put them in the right place with the right species and habitat, that’s where it wants to go,” Conn said. “Going native, you’re helping the ecosystem as a whole..."

Conn said the “heavy lifting” really took place during the first five years of his restoration process, which benefitted in the later years from the assistance of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, an initiative that assists private landowners with large-scale conservation projects. “Breaking the levee and replanting would have gotten it out of the violation,” he said. “But I did a little extra. It just takes time to mature. I want to see a natural patch of woods without all those invasives.” In addition to clearing out the intruders, healing the land entailed planting seeds and seedlings, clearing walking trails, installing ponds, and waiting.

“The cool thing about native stuff is if you put them in the right place with the right species and habitat, that’s where it wants to go,” he said. “Going native, you’re helping the ecosystem as a whole. You put native flowers in front flower beds, you’re hoping for native bees and butterflies and maybe birds. Flowers from Asia are really pretty but have no use to the animals. The animals have evolved here for the plants we have here. That’s the problem with lawn domestic plants for people’s yards. They look nice but don’t do anything [beyond] aesthetic.”

While he will enthusiastically take a machete to the property’s invasives—which can choke out native plants, Conn keeps grooming to a minimum. Space is cleared for accessibility, but vines are meant to climb trees, and Conn lets them. Seeds get carried away by the wind, and the flora has its own design in mind. Animals crop up as well. Conn keeps poachers out, and the acreage is one of the few spots in Iberia Parish where deer don’t have to watch their backs. He balances tending to the land and letting it be—giving it space to heal.

“Conserving, preserving, and restoring native Louisiana habitat is paramount,” Conn said. “Saving natural resources for our children and their children has never been more important, and no effort is too small.”

Learn more about Conn’s work at turtleboyandthebirds.blogspot.com.