Photo courtesy of the National Wildlife Federation.
Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, the largest urban National Wildlife Refuge in the United States, located in New Orleans East.
Why Ecotourism Matters
To live in Louisiana is to exist with a constant, looming awareness of our disappearing coastlines. But for those of us living on that coast, awareness is too mild a word; the impact of coastal erosion, for these communities, has a direct impact on their livelihoods and their homes.
“When I was a kid, they had at least a hundred boats in that area every night in the summertime,” Paul McIntyre said, describing the state of the fishing industry on the shores of Lake Saint Catherine. “Now, it’s so minimal. Like in my neighborhood, five guys might go shrimp now. And they have other jobs. So, it’s definitely not the same.”
McIntyre himself was an oyster fisherman full-time prior to February 2019, when the state opened the Bonnet Carré Spillway, flushing Lake Saint Catherine, Lake Borgne, Lake Ponchartrain, and other salt and brackish lakes with a massive influx of fresh water from the swelling Mississippi River. While the intended mitigation of flood risk was a success, for marine life dependent on higher salinity levels, the results were devastating.
In past openings of the spillway, the New Orleans Landbridge—a series of marshlands at the opening of the bay—helped to block the deluge of fresh water from so drastically impacting these ecosystems. But the past few decades-worth of declining marshland (particularly since Hurricane Katrina) have left the waters of Lake Pontchartrain and other ecologically crucial areas more vulnerable to the influx of fresh water than before. If the lack of water salinity doesn’t kill the wildlife immediately, the algae that blooms as a result of the waters’ warming eventually dies, sinks, and causes hypoxia.
“We had hundreds of dolphins dying. I watched them float across my oyster lease, numerous just riding in,” McIntyre recalled. “And that’s the first time I’ve seen a mortality rate on dolphins like that in my entire lifetime.” Away with the dolphins went the oysters, which McIntyre describes as like “the canary in the mine”: they’re usually the first to die when water quality changes too drastically. “It killed everything I had, you know, my total investment—because we spend a lot of money to grow oysters—was wiped out.”
“We had hundreds of dolphins dying. I watched them float across my oyster lease, numerous just riding in,” McIntyre recalled. “And that’s the first time I’ve seen a mortality rate on dolphins like that in my entire lifetime.”
After the devastation of his oyster business, McIntyre went back to school to study Coastal Studies and now works as a firefighter. He also devotes significant time to helping educate the public on the ecological challenges he’s observed first-hand. Stories like his, he said, demonstrate the urgent need for land and marsh restoration efforts in the region.
Alexandra Kennon
A fishing dock on Lake Saint Catherine, not far from the Landbridge.
Enter: The Great Delta Tours
On a recent sunny but chilly Monday morning, I had the chance to travel with McIntyre out on his oyster boat to witness the loss of the Landbridge on Lake Saint Catherine with my own eyes, as part of an excursion curated by The Great Delta Tours. Founded by Barbara Johnson, The Great Delta Tours engages in ecotourism by taking people outside of New Orleans to the sites of past, current, and future wetlands restoration projects. By explaining the science behind the land loss and its restoration and introducing guests to people like McIntyre and their communities—who are directly impacted by both the loss of marsh and the efforts to restore it—the tours aim to make the necessity of such projects viscerally clear.
"You’re a product of your natural environment. But nowhere is that truer than in Louisiana, because the river has shaped us, and our cultures, and our economy,” Johnson explained. “It's all a beautiful tapestry of neighborhood and culture and economic assets and natural assets. And that’s how we try to present our story.”
The Great Delta Tours’ most popular offering is its Delta Discovery Tour, wherein participants are taken directly into coastal communities like those on Lake Saint Catherine and out in New Orleans East, learning about the history and ecology of Lake Pontchartrain, Bayou Sauvage, the Mississippi River, and other relevant bodies of water. In addition to admiring wildlife in its natural habitat, participants hear directly from individuals in the fishing industry such as McIntyre, explore areas that have been impacted by environmental changes and land loss, and learn about some of the hundreds of currently-ongoing restoration efforts in their various stages. Tour-goers also enjoy a bahn mi (Vietnamese po-boy) lunch from James Beard America’s Classics award-winning Dong Phuong Bakery in New Orleans East—yet another approachable way of connecting guests to Delta communities.
"You’re a product of your natural environment. But nowhere is that truer than in Louisiana, because the river has shaped us, and our cultures, and our economy,” Johnson explained. “It's all a beautiful tapestry of neighborhood and culture and economic assets and natural assets. And that’s how we try to present our story.”
Alexandra Kennon
A bahn mi sandwich from Dong Phuong Bakery in New Orleans East, being enjoyed by the author from McIntyre’s oyster boat near the Landbridge.
The New Orleans Landbridge Shoreline Stabilization and Marsh Creation Project
McIntyre compared the loss of marshland along the Landbridge to tooth decay: “Once you break through the enamel, the rest of it goes fast, you know? That’s kind of how the marshes are. That’s how I’ve witnessed it. Once you break through a shoreline, it usually doesn’t take long to keep on going.”
He remembers riding the school bus past one section of the Landbridge as a child. Back then, “It was a very healthy marsh. A lot of people fished the shoreline of it,” he said. “Then, all of a sudden around the time of Katrina—it’s that tooth decay issue: once the storm beat it up so bad, within fifteen years the land that used to be a half a mile out is now like a tenth of a mile from the roadway.”
Taking visitors to the site of the New Orleans Landbridge is a more recent development for The Great Delta Tours—one that Johnson is particularly excited about because of the location, immediacy, and scale of the project. Officially titled the New Orleans Landbridge Shoreline Stabilization and Marsh Creation project, this undertaking initiated by the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) is estimated to cost $25.4 million, with the goal of utilizing sediment dredged from the floors of Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Saint Catherine to create 169 acres of marshland and nourish 102 more, and to enhance over 15,000 linear feet of shoreline in two targeted locations on the New Orleans Landbridge.
“It was a very healthy marsh. A lot of people fished the shoreline of it,” McIntyre said. “Then, all of a sudden around the time of Katrina—it’s that tooth decay issue: once the storm beat it up so bad, within fifteen years the land that used to be a half a mile out is now like a tenth of a mile from the roadway.”
“That’s nothing to sneeze at, right?” asked Amanda Moore, Deputy Director of the Gulf Program for the National Wildlife Federation and a member of the coalition Restore the Mississippi River Delta. “Like, that’s real money. That’s going into good projects that have great science behind them, that have robust community support…we all need to pay attention and keep an eye on it. And the engagement from the community, and from anybody that cares about the New Orleans area is really, really important.”
Moore has engaged tens of thousands of people regarding the Landbridge project. Out of the many restoration projects for which she advocates, the Landbridge’s importance on a cultural, environmental, and economic level is easiest to communicate to the public. “Because people can look at that and understand, ‘Wow, we don’t want to lose this. This is really important to our future.’ It’s not hard to understand,” Moore said.
“[The Landbridge is] our last line of defense from the Gulf of Mexico, for 1.5 million people in the New Orleans region, including eight parishes and all of those communities around Lake Pontchartrain,” Johnson stressed. Not only is the Landbridge project important to the communities along Lake Saint Catherine, but the Landbridge’s presence is necessary to protect cultural assets, like the vibrant Vietnamese community in New Orleans East, and economic assets like the nearby NASA Michoud Assembly Facility, which provides around 3,500 jobs. “On that Landbridge, we build rockets. We have the most sophisticated technology that’s being manufactured in the world, on the Landbridge,” Johnson marveled, also noting that other employers like Folgers and Textron Marine & Land Systems are nearby, providing in total around 5,000 technological jobs. “And that’s at risk.”
Moore thinks Johnson’s tours are important not only because of the way they communicate the ecosystem’s significance and needs, but for the way they demonstrate the direct human impact. “It’s not just this vast wilderness, there are many communities of people who love that area,” Moore said, referencing the New Orleans East communities, as well as the many hunters and fishermen who benefit from the Landbridge. “And this restoration project is really, really important to them.”
Against the grim realities of the Mississippi Delta’s overwhelming land loss, it’s rare to encounter a bright spot. But in the case of the Landbridge project, once underway the positive outcomes will be real and tangible, turning back the clock on the loss of land in a way that is as observable as the loss itself.
“It’s not just this vast wilderness, there are many communities of people who love that area,” Moore said, referencing the New Orleans East communities, as well as the many hunters and fishermen who benefit from the Landbridge. “And this restoration project is really, really important to them.”
“One of the reasons I got really excited about the putting together the New Orleans Landbridge tour is that we are now starting to see some projects coming out of the ground or about to come out of the ground just fifteen miles from the French Quarter,” Johnson emphasized. “So, you have millions of people [to whom you can] expose firsthand the scale of the land loss and how rapid it has been, especially since the impact of Hurricane Katrina and other more recent storms. But also the solutions and what we’re doing about it. And then what communities, organizations, and individuals can do to really accelerate and create these kinds of changes more quickly and more effectively.”
Alexandra Kennon
Bayou Sauvage, the largest urban National Wildlife Refuge in the United States.
As for what the general public can do to help facilitate such projects, Johnson said the needs are three-pronged. The first component is education: individuals can step up to lead or participate in ecotours like The Great Delta’s, host events that help inform others about coastal land loss and coastal resilience initiatives, or join a group like the Pontchartrain Conservancy Coastal Crew, which teaches the public about coastal needs at community events and festivals.
The second element is advocacy: contacting local politicians to urge their support for coastal restoration efforts, writing letters to the editor and other content making others aware of the devastation of coastal land loss and the importance of funding projects to remedy it, and speaking out in meetings and discussions about funding coastal restoration. “It’s going to take all of us on the advocacy side,” Johnson stressed. “People need to rally to say, ‘This is important.’ It’s the classic squeaky wheel.”
The third and final component is stewardship, or volunteering—The Pontchartrain Conservancy and The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana in particular are always in need of volunteers for various hands-on projects. “Both of them are doing planting of trees and wetland grasses, they’re recycling oyster shells,” Johnson said. “There’s always something going on.”
Now that the efforts of the Landbridge project are underway, McIntyre—who has witnessed the immediate success of other dredging projects in the past—is confident that the marshland restoration will come quickly. “There’s no guessing with ‘maybe this’ll work’—it’s definitely going to work. The land will be there. When they start pumping, within a week, you gonna be like ‘ooh, look at that land!’” he said. “So, it’s not a hit or miss, it’s definitely going to happen.”
As for why people like McIntyre, Johnson, and Moore personally devote such time and efforts toward these causes—it can all be drawn back to the Delta, and their deep, enduring love for this place that is our home.
“Anything I can do to help my state, my paradise,” McIntyre said. “Because watching it fall apart just isn’t fun.”
For information on The Great Delta Tours or how to book, visit thegreatdeltatours.com.
For an interactive map explaining the Landbridge project and the many other coastal restoration efforts in various stages, visit the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority’s comprehensive resource at cims.coastal.louisiana.gov.
