Photo by Henry Cancienne
“Commonly we stride through the out-of-doors too swiftly to see more than the most obvious and prominent things. For observing nature, the best pace is a snail’s pace,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning author/naturalist Edwin Way Teale.
Louisiana photographer Henry Cancienne agrees. No airboat fan, he explores afoot at a snail’s pace, preferring that intimate closeness—and there is nothing in nature too small not to warrant his rapt attention.
Besides providing inspiration for photographers and artists and writers, Louisiana’s coastal marshes and swamps have meant different things to different people over the centuries—livelihoods and sustenance for fishermen and trappers and hunters, hideouts for hermits and outlaws and pirates, unbroken solitude for progress-weary souls, and last refuge for dreamers and schemers clinging to a vanishing way of life.
But these wetland wildernesses are endangered environments. We have been so careless in the past, so sure that our natural resources would last forever. Now we know better. Every year brings further loss from coastal erosion, hurricane surges, saltwater incursion, land subsidence, levees and logging, destructive energy exploration and assorted other environmental abuses. To preserve these vulnerable environments, Cancienne has photographed his favorite easily accessible places, and he is pleased that many of them are national wildlife refuges, once patronized primarily by hunters and fishermen—but now with trails and boardwalks broadening their appeal.
Cancienne measures preserved wildness by Pileated Woodpeckers. “The more Pileateds I see, the more I know I’m in the right place. But that must have been said of Ivorybills a hundred years ago, and now there are no more. I wonder how long we have left for the Pileated?”
There are lots of places to ponder such questions while exploring the wilds of South Louisiana, and fortunately you don’t have to be an expert outdoorsman to take advantage of many of them. A comfortable pair of shoes, drinking water, and mosquito spray may be the only required equipment for discovering these locales at a leisurely pace.
• For nesting egrets, herons, roseate spoonbills and other water birds, Cancienne sends spring birdwatchers to the active rookeries at Lake Martin within the Nature Conservancy’s 10,000-acre Cypress Island Preserve, and the salt domes of Jefferson Island and Avery Island, where Monsieur Ned McIlhenny saved great snowy egrets from an extinction threatened by the popularity of the special feathers they grow during mating seaon—their nuptial aigrettes—for decorating ladies’ hats.
• The pine savannahs of 15,000-acre Big Branch March National Wildlife Refuge on Lake Pontchartrain’s Northshore are ideal nesting areas for endangered Red-cockaded woodpeckers.
• On Grand Isle, Louisiana’s last inhabited barrier island, the Nature Conservancy of Louisiana developed the state’s first migratory bird trail linking several premier birdwatching areas in undeveloped oak-hackberry forests.
• Along Louisiana’s gulf coast, Cameron Prairie NWR, headquarters of the Southwest Louisiana National Wildlife Refuge Complex, provides critical nesting and overwintering habitat for thousands of ducks and geese along the Central and Mississippi Flyways; migrating songbirds and shorebirds are present spring and fall, wading birds in summer.
• The freshwater marshes of 35,000-acre Lacassine NWR often shelter some 800,000 ducks and geese. Sabine NWR bordering Sabine Lake is the largest coastal marsh refuge on the Gulf of Mexico, established in 1937—124,511 acres of productive wetland with waterfowl wintering grounds and nursery areas for estuarine-dependent marine species like shrimp and crab.
• Also along the southwest coast is Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, a major wetland research facility bordering the gulf for more than twenty-six miles. This refuge has one of the highest alligator nesting densities and shelters thousands of wintering waterfowl, but suffered enormous damage from storms, beginning in 1957 with a direct hit by Hurricane Audrey. When donated to the state by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1920, there were 86,000 acres; today there are 10,000 fewer.
• Severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina, Jean Lafitte National Historical Park—Barataria Preserve has 20,000 acres of marsh, swamp and forest along Lakes Salvador and Cataouatche, and, as at other impacted parks, visitors observe innovative reclamation projects designed to stem land loss and restore native plants. The iris here are spectacular.
• In lower Terrebonne Parish near Cocodrie the Marguerite Moffett Audubon Sanctuary’s boardwalk overlooks ongoing preservation efforts to restore marsh with new technology in sight of bald eagle nesting platforms; also in Terrebonne is Mandalay National Wildlife Refuge’s freshwater marsh/cypress swamp with trail, covered bridge and viewing platform.
Big-screen images underscored the fragility of coastal marshes and swamplands in the amazing Beasts of the Southern Wild, filmed in the Barataria-Terrebonne Basin where some sixty percent of Louisiana’s wetlands loss is occurring. Water laps at the eroding edges of the narrow roadbed connecting wetlands restoration projects of Pointe-aux-Chenes WMA with the historic Indian settlement on Isle de Jean Charles—the loss of land and community heralding a vanishing way of life—one that lies outside the Morganza-to-the-Gulf hurricane protection levee.
• The Northshore region skirting Lake Pontchartrain has important preserves, especially White Kitchen, the Nature Conservancy’s first Louisiana preserve situated between branches of Pearl River in Honey Island Swamp, one of the least altered river swamps in the country, supporting rookeries of nesting waterbirds and the south’s longest continually occupied eagle nest. Honey Island Swamp Road in Pearl River WMA is a prime birding area; in this region in 1999 one of the last sightings of a pair of Ivorybill Woodpeckers was reported. The 36,500-acre Bogue Chitto National Wildlife Refuge is mostly accessible by boat, its hiking trails closed during Pearl River Basin high water.
• Tickfaw State Park borders the river whose overflow patterns form its backwater swamps, with boardwalk trails, good hiking/cycling roads, cabins and campsites. Another Northshore state park of diverse ecosystems bordered on three sides by water is 2800-acre Fontainebleau State Park on the historic plantation of Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville, last of the great Creoles, with 1829 brick sugar mill ruins, hiking trails and sections of the Tammany Trace cycling route, boardwalk, pond and saltwater angling, picnicking, sandy beach, swimming pool, campsites, cabins and group lodge. Across from Fontainebleau, Northlake Nature Center has trails along Bayou Castine. The Nature Conservancy’s Abita Creek Flatwoods Preserve features rare carnivorous plants along its trail and boardwalk through longleaf pine savannas, once the dominant Northshore habitat.
• Cancienne, recalling the squish of mud between bare toes in childhood swamp forays, marvels that many of these areas now have handicap-accessible walkways so well maintained they can be enjoyed in shoes and street clothes. Some are in surprisingly busy settings, like St. James Parish Welcome Center’s tiny Wetlands Boardwalk off US 61, and the Lafayette Visitor Center between lanes of heavily trafficked Evangeline Thruway, providing just a taste of cypress-shaded swamplife. In the middle of the village of Jean Lafitte is one of the state’s best nature walks, the Nature Study Park, a well-maintained meander through forty-one acres of cypress swamp. Morgan City’s 9.5-acre Brownell Memorial Park on the banks of Lake Palourde has gravel paths through a freshwater swamp, moss-draped cypress trees, native plants, and 106-foot carillon tower.
• BREC’s Bluebonnet Swamp packs a lot of punch in a mere 102 acres of cypress-tupelo swamp and upland hardwood forest plus an award-winning Nature Center, a quiet oasis of wilderness amidst the capital city’s bustling retail/medical center. Bayou Savage NWR’s 25,000 acres are entirely within New Orleans’ corporate limits, the country’s largest urban wildlife refuge, its diverse habitats recovering from Katrina’s winds and saltwater surge that killed ninety percent of the trees and destroyed thousands of acres of marsh.
• The Atchafalaya Basin offers numerous public recreation areas within its half-million acres of bottomland hardwoods, cypress-tupelo swamps, overflow lakes and bayous. The thirteen adjacent parishes formed the Atchafalaya Heritage Area to preserve and celebrate the cultural legacy of this eternally evolving environment that poses such challenges for providing flood control while also protecting its natural resources, ensuring recreation access, and balancing environmental protection with controlled development. Primitive trails penetrate the 15,220-acre Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge established in the 1930s by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, adjacent to the state’s Sherburne WMA, the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Bayou Des Ourses and Indian Bayou.
• Cat Island NWR preserves 10,473 acres of virgin wetland forest including the National Champion bald cypress along the southernmost un-leveed stretch of the lower Mississippi River, the dynamics of cyclical wetting and drying making it ecologically unique. In coastal southeast Louisiana, Bayou Teche NWR has nine thousand acres of wet bottomland hardwood and cypress-gum forests, ideal for wading birds, waterfowl, alligators and the Louisiana black bear, whose protection is the refuge’s primary objective.
Most of these areas are free; some require a Wild Louisiana Stamp, others have regulations regarding public use, seasonal observations, and hunting and fishing licensing. Many have excellent visitor centers with exhibits on park ecosystems, flora and fauna. Specifics on each area’s trail/road systems may be found online.
Information in this story is from an upcoming UL Press book illustrated with superb images of some easy hikes and drives through Louisiana’s precious swamps and coastal marshes, areas chosen to whet the appetite for use by those who perhaps cannot manage slogging through the swamplands for fifty miles or so. We can ALL access these areas, and we’d better hurry up and do it.
Details. Details. Details.
Avery Island Rookery:
Wildlife Management Areas across southeast Louisiana:
www.fws.gov/southeastlouisiana
Cypress Island Preserve, Abita Creek Flatwoods Preserve, White Kitchen Preserve and Grand Isle: www.nature.org Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center: www.brec.org Tickfaw and Fountainebleau state parks: www.crt.state.la.us/parks Barataria Preserve: www.nps.gov/jela St. James Parish Welcome Center 1094 US Highway 61 Gramercy, La (225) 562-2525 Brownell Memorial Park 3359 LA Highway 70 Morgan City, La (985) 384-2283 Jean Lafitte Nature Study Park: www.townofjeanlafitte.com Search for The Marguerite Moffett Audubon Sanctuary at www.jjaudubon.net. Atchafalaya Basin Heritage: www.atchafalaya.org
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