On Tuesday (Dec. 5), a handful of volunteers stood on the banks of Bayou Bienvenue, loading delicate cypress saplings with pink tags into a flat-hull motor boat.
The volunteers, part of the Central Wetlands Reforestation Collective, were headed into the marshlands to plant 200 saplings as part of a new effort to restore 63,000 trees, along with native grasses, to Orleans and St. Bernard parishes over the next three years.
Coastal erosion, saltwater intrusion and commercial development have ravaged the cypress trees and other plants native to the region’s wetlands, leaving the area without a natural hurricane buffer.
But if all goes according to plan, these small saplings will grow into mature cypress trees, restoring these wetlands to dense vegetation.
“A lot of trees were lost, just over the last couple of decades and it is very needed that we have a natural line of defense,” said Rollin Black, director of coastal and habitat restoration at the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED).
The Central Wetlands Reforestation Collective is a collaboration between five organizations that focuses on getting local communities involved in reforestation efforts to try to combat Louisiana’s rapid land loss in an area where approximately one football field of land mass is lost every 100 minutes.
The collective is planting throughout the Central Wetlands Unit, a network of natural marshland inside south Louisiana’s levee system, said Arlo Townsley, a coastal restoration coordinator with CSED.
The center and other community organizations are working on planting Bayou Bienvenue before moving south to Bayou Dupre. The project, funded by a $1.2 million grant from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, also uses materials such as recycled glass to help rebuild rapidly dwindling land in coastal southeast Louisiana.
The effort, which officially launched in November, includes multiple tree planting sessions in Bayou Bienvenue this week.
Marshes in Bayou Bienvenue and the rest of the area play an important role during flooding, absorbing excess water and filtering out pollutants that can seep into water systems in the aftermath of hurricanes. The marshes host cypress trees which absorb windfall and work to hold the muddy land together with their roots.
But in south Louisiana’s brackish wetlands, native tree species face increasingly salty water as the threats of coastal erosion and salt water intrusion continue. Development in the area, along with the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal, have exposed the natural habitats to salt water, damaging native tree species and leaving the area vulnerable to hurricanes.
As extreme weather events become more frequent and temperatures get hotter in the Gulf of Mexico, meteorologists warn these factors could rapidly accelerate hurricanes coming into the area. (Hurricanes and storms themselves are also a threat to new and mature cypress growth. Hurricane Katrina accounts for much of the tree loss in the Lower 9th Ward, according to the city’s reforestation plan.)
Those threats make the tree-planting work all the more urgent, the groups say.
“This is helping our communities not only in the Lower 9, but in New Orleans, and in other coastal communities, particularly coastal communities of color,” said Arthur Johnson, CSED’s director. “We play a role in helping restore our coast.”
Bayou Bienvenue also has historical significance as a traditional area for fishing and crabbing and as part of the region that served as a refuge to maroons escaping from slavery. The Bienvenue Bayou is now largely water, with narrow strips of densely mudded land. Invasive tree species have spread quickly through the area, often falling over and tearing up more of the scarce land mass.
Volunteers worked quickly on Tuesday, transporting cypress saplings from the Common Ground Relief nursery in the Lower 9th Ward over multiple trips to Bayou Bienvenue. There, they dug holes, carefully placing trees in the ground with stakes to support the young saplings.
Together, the collective has also created berms, or raised terraces, of land further out into the water, using a combination of recycled Christmas trees and glass to create land mass. Glass collected by the Lower 9th Ward Center is turned into gravel and used to refortify the coast by the recycling company Glass Half Full.
The berms also hold invasive species, such as waterway-clogging water hyacinths, at bay. The groups are also working to restore bullrushes, native water plants also important to the hurricane buffer.
On Tuesday, organizers warned volunteers of gators, snakes, feral hogs and poison ivy at the planting site. The team also worked to safeguard the saplings from invasive animal species by planting around hog trails and wrapping the young saplings in plastic guards to prevent nutria from chewing down their thin trunks.
“We’re gonna do a lot more next year, which is super exciting,” Townsley said. “As we go into the scary future, it’s really, really important that we have those systems to protect us and support us.”
Other organizations involved in the effort are Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, the Pontchartrain Conservancy, Common Ground Relief and the Arlene and Joseph Meraux Foundation.
The Central Wetlands Reforestation Collective is inviting volunteers to tree planting events in Bayou Bienvenue Dec. 12-14. Those interested can email atownsley@sustainthenine.org.
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