Saving Louisiana's wetlands one paddle trip at a time.
There was a slight coolness in the air as we watched our guide, Lindsay Pick, methodically untie the knots securing our kayaks to the trailer. There were four of us in her hands today, my husband and me from New Orleans and two tourists from Washington, D.C.—all city dwellers nervously practicing our paddling techniques in the air.
Co-owner of the three-team Louisiana Lost Lands Environmental Tours, Lindsay has been leading tours throughout Louisiana’s swamps for nearly a year, a spin-off from her previous career producing the television series “Category Five Wetlands Watch.” Along with Marie Gould and Bob Marshall, she’s on a mission to expose both the beauty and devastation of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands.
Life vests buckled and cameras stowed in waterproof bags, we gingerly settled in our tandem kayaks before she shoved us out into the waters of Blind River. She led us south through the Maurepas Swamp Wildlife Management Area, away from the St. James Boat Club and under a bridge low enough to make us hold our breath until we had safely passed.
We paddled slowly at first, struggling to reign in control of our boats and avoid each other’s erratic steering patterns. Matt and Nick, the uncle and nephew team from D.C., seemed to be catching on faster, until Lindsay quietly lowered our rudder into the water and opened our eyes to the wonders of foot-pedal steering.
As the highway sounds faded behind us, the river narrowed and we entered a postcard Louisiana landscape. A cypress and tupelo forest stood silently breathing on the edge of the dark, meandering water, beckoning us further into its depths.
We paddled for hours, losing all sense of time inside our private storybook setting. Occasionally the hoot of an owl or the sighting of a blue heron would make us pause. Paddles suspended in air and frozen in our seats, we’d noiselessly record the moment in our minds, shelving it among those memories to savor.
Pulling up to an abandoned hunting camp, we tied our kayaks to the pier and stretched our legs on the warped boards beneath us. We had worked up an appetite, and Lindsay’s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were a gourmet meal for our churning stomachs. Despite the flooded house and crumbling tiki hut, we all recognized the allure in the remote retreat, deteriorating in unison with its beloved surroundings.
Draped in moss and rooted by knees extending above the river’s surface, the cypress trees beside us appeared timeless, champions against the annual storms that batter their resistant frames. Yet, it’s not nature that threatens them—it’s man.
We had come today for the experience, to immerse ourselves in the simple beauty of this magical scenery. What we found was an education into an environment stripped to its core and left shattered by the man-made levees, canals and pipelines bisecting its integrity.
Earlier that morning, we sat in Bob and Marie’s dining room in Uptown New Orleans, sipping coffee and chatting about life in general.
“I guess we should get started,” Bob announced. Seated at the head of the table, he tapped on the laptop in front of him and brought up a PowerPoint before stopping to look at each of us in turn, “Did you know that right now, you are sitting in one of the most endangered and threatened landscapes in America?”
A Pulitzer Prize-winning outdoor and environmental journalist, Bob amassed a wealth of research about the rise and fall of Louisiana’s coastline through his years reporting for the Times-Picayune. Today, he’s a vocal advocate for restoring the wetlands, writing for the nonprofit investigative news site The Lens, and working on a fifteen-part series on the coast for WWNO Public Radio.
“It took the Mississippi six thousand years to build the delta, and it took us seventy years to destroy it,” said Bob. He painted a grim picture, soon to be illustrated by the delicate ecosystem we saw that afternoon.
He explained how the first strike was the Mississippi River levees, built as protection after the 1927 flood.
”It put the river in a straightjacket and prevented natural overflowing and resupply of sediment,” he detailed. “If that’s all we had done, our wetlands would still exist close to the condition they did, but in the thirties, we found oil and gas. Twenty thousand miles of canals were dredged for oil, gas and shipping, which removed seven percent of the total area of the coastal zone and let saltwater in that began killing the vegetation.”
The further discovery of oil offshore accelerated the erosion, systematically breaking down a once productive estuary.
“Now we have the sea level rise. The East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico are looking at the water rising eighteen inches by the end of the century, but southeast—the Mississippi River delta—could see a three-and-a-half to five feet sea level rise because they [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] are adding in subsidence,” Bob continued. “This means almost everything in coastal Louisiana outside of the levees could be under water by the end of the century.”
It was a powerful statement, delivered with an underlying frustration at the lack of progress to change our state’s future. Yet there are plans and designs developed, innovative ideas to rebuild our precious land, but it all takes money.
“The Louisiana Coastal Master Plan 2012 outlines a project that over forty years could reverse land loss, so we would actually be growing land. It would mine sediment from rivers and pump it out into the marshes. Then we would use big river sediment diversions to nourish those marshes that were built,” Bob explained. “It’s a $50 billion project.”
The price tag was staggering, but so is the sixteen square miles of land we lose each year. Add to that the reality that the country’s economy will plummet when the Gulf of Mexico is lapping at the doors of the top tonnage port in the nation.
There are funding sources identified for the Master Plan, such as the state taking a larger share in offshore oil tax revenues, but things are moving painfully slow.
It’s an uphill battle; yet Lost Lands is up for the challenge, fighting to win one kayaker at a time.
Details. Details. Details.
www.lostlandstours.org. Aside from kayak trips through swamps (starting at $90/person), the group also runs larger boat tours out of Plaquemines Parish, visiting Barataria Bay and Grand Isle, or shorter trips through Bayou Sauvage. They can also tailor a tour to meet a group’s needs.
