Native Range

Holding fast to their traditions, coastal hunters are taking steps to reverse the loss of hunting lands and decline in game species

by

State Route 23 starts in Gretna, Louisiana, and meets the Mississippi River in Belle Chasse. The two travel together southeast for 70 miles, but the road comes to a halt in Venice. Pavement then gives way to mud and marsh grass, sprawling toward the Gulf of Mexico. 

Just a few miles upriver in Buras, Ryan Lambert, owner of Cajun Fishing Adventures, has spent nearly forty years combing these bayous as a hunting and fishing guide. Tourists from around the world come to him hoping to experience the expansive delta and its teeming wildlife. “I’ve seen what other people dream about when they picture opening day of duck season,” said Lambert. “I’ve seen thousands of ducks flying south.”

Over the last few decades though, in his low-lying corner of the world, Lambert has noticed a decline in the concentration of waterfowl as well as other game species like deer and rabbits. 

To him, the culprit is obvious. “So much of the land is gone,” said Lambert. “Where we used to rabbit hunt is gone. The land just isn’t there anymore—it’s four-foot-deep with water. All the ridges through there are gone, and the trees that were on them.”

“I’ve seen what other people dream about when they picture opening day of duck season,” said Lambert. “I’ve seen thousands of ducks flying south.”

Between 1932 and 2016, Louisiana lost an area of coastal wetlands the size of Delaware, more than two thousand square miles, according to a 2017 study by the U.S. Geological Survey. If nothing is done, scientists predict that in the next fifty years Louisiana could lose an additional four thousand square miles of its coast. 

Significant blame can be placed on the Mississippi River levees. For thousands of years, seasonal flooding was the formula that built southern Louisiana as well as kept it above the waterline. The levees starve nearby marshes of the deltaic building blocks that create new land—fresh water carrying sediment. This issue is only compounded by other environmental threats including coastal subsidence, destructive hurricanes, sea level rise, and the zig zagging maze of canals dug out for oil exploration across the coast.

Aerial photographs of the delta provide a clear picture of the destruction. When comparing photographs taken today to images from only a few decades before, one can easily see that entire lakes have vanished and the emaciated land along the river is but a ghost of its former self. Gone, too, are many of the area’s live oak and cypress trees as well as the freshwater vegetation, which has been since replaced by saline species. According to Lambert, these factors have put a strain on the wildlife he and others have depended on not only for sustenance but for the continuation of an age-old cultural tradition. For the anglers and hunters, Lambert believes the land loss to be an irrecoverable tragedy. “It’s like a cancer,” he said. “I have watched the landscape completely disappear.”

Losing a lifestyle

Since Curtis Hymel was eleven years old, he’s been traveling the hour south from his home in Norco to hunt near Pointe-aux-Chenes Wildlife Management Area. He recalled smaller, shallower ponds with thick vegetation blanketing the area in those days but “those places no longer exist.”

Hymel’s family has been hunting along the coast for generations. The geographic location is so intertwined with these outdoor pursuits that hunting is less a pastime and more a cultural identity—being coastal marsh hunters is a fundamental part of who they are. Today, though that standing is shaky. Hymel, 31, spends most of the hunting season farther north near Jonesville. 

“Families are losing their land,” said Hymel. “Family land keeps them connected to their history and it is disappearing. People who would normally be interested in the sportsman lifestyle, we’re losing them too because it’s not there for them anymore. We’re losing a lifestyle.”

[Read this: A Bird's-Eye View: To some sorts of sportsmen, Baton Rouge has been shrinking as it grows.]

Hymel said the habitat changes around Lafourche and eastern Terrebonne parishes have been drastic just over the course of his lifetime. A decline in fresh water, land, and trees—as well as a bump in saltwater intrusion—pointed to fewer game species along the coast, Hymel has realized. Whitetail deer, waterfowl, squirrels, and rabbits are leaving the area, and it shows. “There are very little rabbit hunters left. If one person goes hunting, they’ll kill what little rabbits there are left,” he said.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) doesn’t census terrestrial game populations like rabbits or whitetails. Rather, the LDWF looks at habitat health as an indicator of the carrying capacity of a specific area. In hard hit areas, coastal land loss has resulted in dwindling capacities for wildlife. “Unfortunately for most of coastal Louisiana, habitat loss or conversion, in some cases, has been detrimental to deer simply because there’s not adequate high ground or a plant community available for them,” said Johnathan Bordelon, LDWF deer program manager. 

While it doesn’t paint a complete picture, deer herd size can be estimated by studying harvest data compiled after hunters report bagging their deer in the field. Bordelon said coastal parishes like Vermillion and Calcasieu have some of the lowest rates of harvests in the state and, presumably, diminutive populations. 

Low harvest rates, spanning several years at Pass-a-Loutre WMA—46,540 acres near the mouth of the Mississippi River—prompted state biologists to investigate. A 2016 study revealed that the herd is in decline, and the primary driver is likely coastal wetland loss. Researchers also found that female survival rates were less than fifty percent, when, according to Bordelon, a healthy population should be closer to eighty or ninety percent. “There’s not even a firearm season on Pass-a-Loutre anymore simply because there’s not the population of deer there to support it,” said Bordelon. 

Deer Hunting Evolution: Technology has had a great impact on the deer hunting tradition.]

Waterfowl population trends are easier to determine thanks to aerial surveys conducted every year by dozens of state and federal agencies. In Louisiana, aerial surveys along the coast, conducted by the LDWF in January 2019, show some of the lowest waterfowl numbers in years—an estimated 2.05 million, which is 31 percent below Louisiana’s long-term average of 2.99 million.

“The single biggest factor influencing the capability of Louisiana’s wetlands to support ducks is coastal wetland loss,” said Larry Reynolds, the LDWF waterfowl study leader. “I know guys that in the ‘70s and ‘80s killed hundreds of ducks during duck season and now kill dozens. And it is absolutely tied to habitat loss in their specific area.”

In addition to a reduction of marsh habitat, Reynolds said rice agriculture in southwest Louisiana has dwindled, while wide swaths of invasive aquatic vegetation choke up once productive areas like Maurepas Swamp WMA. The many effects of climate change play their part too. “It’s an absolute fact that winter temperatures have changed over the last fifty years,” he said. “And all that water north of us in the flyway, and those warm temperatures, reduced the number of birds wintering in Louisiana.” This all works to make the Louisiana coast an overall less attractive destination for wintering waterfowl.

Fighting back

Riding his boat year after year along the Mississippi River near Fort St. Philip, Lambert began to notice something: The open water was slowly giving way to grassy marsh. After asking around, Lambert discovered that in 2006 the USFWS had launched a project funded by the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) to dredge crevasses on a portion of the Mississippi River that would increase water flow into the surrounding marsh. Then, earthen terraces were constructed to trap sediment from the river, promoting marsh building and allowing the Mississippi to act as the architect it has been for eons, fashioning new land with its sediment-laden floods.

“You should see the amount of ducks out there,” said Lambert. “It’s amazing.”

He reached out to Ducks Unlimited (DU) with the idea to construct a similar terracing project adjacent to Fort St. Philip in Bay Denesse. In December 2016, DU received a $1 million grant from the North American Wetlands Conservation Act to construct the project. Additional funding from DU, the National Wildlife Federation, and Lambert brings the total to near $1.1 million. Mike Carloss, director of conservation programs with DU’s southwest region, said he expects construction to start in the fall, pending permits, and it’ll likely take four months to complete. 

The project is expected to impact roughly 2,600 acres of habitat extending to Quarantine Bay, a nearby body of water that stretches to the Gulf of Mexico—though Lambert has confidence the project could enhance as much as 4,000 acres. 

Plans to curb coastal erosion by reintroducing the river to marshes through diversions are currently being considered as part of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority’s (CPRA) $50 billion Coastal Master Plan. One of the most high-profile projects, the $1.4 billion Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion on the Mississippi River’s west bank, is expected to begin construction in 2020 before coming online in 2026. It’s projected to build and maintain 30,000 acres of land over fifty years. However, because a project of this scale has never been attempted, it is difficult to definitively predict its outcome. A 2018 study by researchers at Tulane University concluded that Louisiana is losing land so fast that efforts to restore the coast won’t be enough to keep up. 

Since the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge opened in 1919, more than fifteen thousand acres have vanished with average erosion rates of more than fifty feet a year. The refuge, near Pecan Island in Southwest Louisiana, is too far from the Mississippi to benefit from river diversions. However, thanks to a $34.3 million shoreline protection project funded by the CWPPRA, three miles of Rockefeller’s coastline have been secured by a breakwater. Phillip Trosclair, program manager at Rockefeller, said an additional three miles are slated to receive improvements starting in June, tapping into $14 million from the CPRA and a partnership with the Cameron Parish Police Jury. 

[Read this: Good News for the Gulf: The organizations helping Louisiana do an about-face.]

“We have seen land building up to the back of the breakwater,” said Trosclair. “If you look along the coast without these breakwaters, you see little, if any at all, wooded vegetation. At our breakwater demonstration site, you have actual wooded vegetation from brush growing. This tells us that this structure has stabilized the coast long enough to where these species can get established.”

Officials at Rockefeller are also working with the area’s private landowners and tenants to develop strategies and secure funding to protect their property. 

For more than forty years, Doug Yentzen has traveled to hunt near Grand Chenier on a parcel of land that had once been drained and used to graze cattle. After those ranching efforts waned, levees fell into disrepair and the land was reclaimed by nature, which allowed him and other hunters to utilize the space. From his hunting property, Yentzen watched the Gulf of Mexico encroach on over 200 feet of land over the years, which brought more salt water, less submerged aquatic vegetation, and fewer ducks. 

“Over time, all these grasslands that had turned back into prime duck habitat started to dissipate and become big open lakes,” said Yentzen, whose company Coastal Pipe of Louisiana supports the Gulf Coast oilfields. “The salt water was making it become like a desert.”

With the help of the landowners who lease the property to him—he calls their support “vital”—a few years ago Yentzen started building new perimeter levees and repairing the former ones to keep salt water out in an effort to save the marsh before it was too late. “Once the levees got built up and we got a lot of rain, the marsh started to flourish,” he said. “It brought the salt water down to an acceptable level so that all the aquatic vegetation could grow.” 

While Yentzen admits that beach erosion and saltwater intrusion will likely always be an issue, for now, he’s seen a lot of improvement so long as the salt water is kept at bay. “The marsh is such a vibrant, resilient area,” he said. “You give it the lightest care, and it explodes in growth.” 

Lambert, too, has observed the resiliency of the marsh. As he captains his boat near the terracing project at Fort St. Philip, the newly built ground juts out of the water, peppered with aquatic vegetation and even some willow trees. 

To Lambert, Fort St. Philip and the upcoming Bay Denesse projects are a testament to the land-building power of the Mississippi River. Even more though, he said the projects are a beacon of hope, something everyone along the coast sorely needs.

“Places that used to be five feet [under] water are now land,” he said. “I think there’s hope. If we open the river up and get diversions flowing, we can build the estuary back. 

“It’s happening as we speak.”  

Cajun Fishing Adventures

cajunfishingadventures.com

Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act

lacoast.gov

Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority

coastal.la.gov

Ducks Unlimited

ducks.org