Louisiana’s Conservation Leadership Corps 

                                                        PWJ April 2023

Seasoned outdoor enthusiasts are likely aware of and appreciate the many contributions made by the Louisiana Wildlife Federation since its incorporation over eighty years ago. Its conservation successes are summarized on the LWF website (https://lawildlifefed.org/who-we-are/history-accomplishments/).

LWF represents hunters, anglers, campers, birders, boaters, and others who seek to protect our state's natural resources and the quality of its environment. This nonprofit organization represents 19 affiliate organizations and has more than 8,000 members. Its guiding principles include education, advocacy, and the advancement of sound, scientifically established resource management principles. LWF is an affiliate organization of the National Wildlife Federation.  

I’ve emphasized various forms of environmental education in previous columns. An important LWF initiative in this regard has been the development of the Edgar Veillon Conservation Leadership Corps (CLC). This program, established in 2018, honors the late Edgar Veillon, a conservation leader and longtime member of the LWF. He provided a generous bequest for such educational activities. Others who have helped in funding this CLC program are the Stuller Family Foundation, the Boo Grigsby Foundation, and the LWF affiliate Friends of Grand Isle. 

 

The program’s fifth annual cohort class of 22 students selected from state colleges and universities was announced in early 2023. Fifteen students were selected in each of its first two years, while 22 and 20 college students were chosen for the third and fourth annual cohort classes.   

These CLC students come from various academic majors and grapple with real-world conservation issues. They receive training in sessions over several months from natural resource professionals in the public, non-profit and private sectors. Case studies and collaborative activities build student leadership and advocacy skills. Upon successful program completion, participants receive a certificate of accomplishment, a letter of commendation, and a $200 scholarship to advance their continuing education. 

 

The development of LWF’s Conservation Leadership Corps was influenced by successful CLC programs in other states. Missouri’s CLC program began in 2002 and has had over 400 students complete the program since then. Wisconsin’s and Minnesota’s CLC programs started in 2013 and 2016, respectively, and incorporated many of the Missouri’s program goals and approaches. Some states have youth conservation leadership approaches with different names, such as the Texas Brigades, which is wildlife-themed and aimed at high school students. Louisiana’s CLC approach originally included seniors in high school along with college and university students. In recent years, this CLC has requested applications only from those in state colleges and universities. 

Another recent opportunity for some Louisiana CLC students has been out-of-state travel and experiences with students from other states who are interested in conservation issues. The Conservation Leadership Corps of Missouri hosted the inaugural Confluence of Young Conservation Leaders (CYCL) in November of 2017. Young conservationists from the Missouri, Wisconsin, Texas, and Minnesota programs attended. Other states, like Louisiana, sent representatives to CYCL in 2017 who were interested in starting their own youth conservation leadership corps. The Texas Brigades hosted the 2019 CYCL held in Austin, TX, and the CYCL was held in 2022 in Poynette, Wisconsin. LWF sent four students from its 2022 CLC class to Wisconsin to learn about ecological restoration, endangered species, and what other conservation organizations across the country were doing. Field tours for these CYCL students included prominent conservation sites across southern Wisconsin. 

One Louisiana CLC and CYCL participant, has been Madelyn Helm, a sophomore at LSU majoring in renewable natural resources. She has described her experiences in the program’s 2022 summary report. “It’s been such a privilege to be able to engage with leaders in the field of conservation. I’m inspired by their knowledge, experience, and passion. I applied to CLC to make sure that I am in the right field for me, and now I am more sure than ever that this is what I want to pursue. My favorite part of CLC was bonding with other young environmentalists like me. I really feel that we all connected.” 

The CLC is one example of recent progress by those in public, non-profit, and private organizations in this state. This past year brought greater hope for the future with the legislative passage and establishment of the Louisiana Outdoors Forever program with $10 million committed for the program’s first year. These funds should contribute to efforts to protect drinking water supplies, conserve wildlife habitat, and provide recreational opportunities in the state. Given the special challenges of climate change and biodiversity losses in Louisiana, such greater conservation awareness and advocacy should be applauded. 

                         Improving Our National and State Waterways 

                                         PWJ Issue March 2023

All of us are heavily dependent on water resources and our private- and public-sector water infrastructure. Yet Professor Brian Richter claims that the vast majority of Americans are illiterate on water issues, even as water scarcity and purity challenges confront us. 

Unlike Professor Richter, I won’t try to describe water illiteracy as he does in his book Chasing Water and on his web site (https://www.sustainablewaters.org/water-illiteracy/). Water management policies and challenges in the USA are broad and complex. Richter claims that even experts on these issues have not yet been able to develop effective learning materials to generate greater public awareness. Basic knowledge about watersheds, aquifers, estuaries, impoundments, water cycles, water footprints, and desalination initiatives requires more time and learning motivation than most of us would be willing to commit.  

My focus, instead, is a simple overview of a few changes in American values and demands related to our waterway resources. Goals and policies for water conservation, starting more than a century ago, were associated with the use of our waterways to the fullest extent possible.  Multiple needs such as providing flood control, crop irrigation, and public and business water consumption led to many decades of dam and reservoir construction along most of America’s rivers. This grand effort also created more electrical power generation as well as opportunities for business and employment growth. One notable example was the Tennessee Valley Authority during the Great Depression. There was overwhelming national support for the governmental leaders and technocrats who planned, designed, and constructed these massive infrastructure projects.  

 

Environmental services consultant, David Hirschman, explains that views concerning our national waterways began to shift later in the twentieth century. There was less confidence in top-down thinking and political deals made among elites. Dam projects had sometimes brushed aside certain voices, having sustainability or ecosystem concerns, in a rush for a supposed greater overall human good.  

 

One high-profile example of this shifting mindset and controversies about waterways was the Buffalo River Campaign in Arkansas. The Ozark Society, Inc. was founded in 1962 by Dr. Neil Compton and his associates for the immediate purpose of saving the Buffalo River from dams proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Through their efforts and those of others, parts of the beautiful Buffalo River were protected and designated as our first “national river” in 1972.  

 

The Ozark Society remains active today in its principal purpose – the preservation of wild and scenic rivers, wilderness, and unique natural areas. The parent Ozark Society now has a network of chapters in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Missouri, all active in conservation, educational and recreational affairs. The Bayou Chapter is based in the Shreveport/Bossier City area and often sponsors events on the bayous, at parks, and in wilderness areas of north Louisiana. 

 

The Nationwide Rivers Inventory (NRI) is a listing of more than 3,200 free-flowing river segments in the United States that are believed to possess one or more remarkable natural or cultural values judged to be at least regionally significant. NRI river segments are potential candidates for inclusion in our National Wild and Scenic River System (NWSRS). Well over 200 of these segments have already been officially designated as “wild and scenic” rivers by the NWSRS. This agency was created by Congress in 1968 to preserve certain rivers in a free-flowing condition for the enjoyment of present and future generations.

The NWSRS protects 13,413 miles of 226 rivers in 41 states and Puerto Rico, according to its 2019 statistics. Yet this is less than one half of one percent of our nation's rivers. Arkansas currently has six wild and scenic river segments that are protected at this national level, while Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi have only one each. Even in Arkansas, only about one-fourth of one percent (210 miles) of the state's total river miles have this federally protected status. Saline Bayou, as it runs 19 miles from Saline Lake upstream to the Kisatchie National Forest, is our sole NWSRS Louisiana scenic river corridor. Congressional efforts in 2022 pursued the addition of more wild and scenic rivers to the NWSRS in the states of Maine, Florida, New Mexico, Montana, Washington, Oregon, and California.

 

On a state level, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries administers its own scenic rivers program. This program seeks to preserve, protect, develop, reclaim, and enhance designated free-flowing Louisiana waterways. The Scenic Rivers Program prohibits or restricts certain activities having detrimental ecological impacts on 3,100 miles of about 80 Louisiana streams and rivers.

Waterway activism and controversies seem strongest in the West, but groups such as the Ozark Society remain committed to their goals in our part of the country. Nationwide advocacy groups include the Wild and Scenic Rivers Coalition (https://wildriverscoalition.org/) and the River Network (https://www.rivernetwork.org/ ). Both organizations are trying to protect our national waterways and to engage the public to take a stronger stance in this regard. 

A related trend, according to Tara Lohan reporting in November 2022 for The Relevator, has been the removal of about 1,200 dams in the USA since 2000. These removals have occurred to help restore river and aquatic life, improve water quality, and boost public safety. In contrast and over roughly the same twenty years, researchers have reported that 4,000 European river barriers have been removed. These include large and smaller dams and obstructions such as weirs and sluices that can block the movement of some fish, invertebrates, sediment, and nutrients. Many of these dams and obstructions became obsolete and/or were viewed as no longer providing beneficial functions.

 

For those interested in staying up to date on biodiversity losses and a wide range of initiatives to combat these, you might check out The Revelator online (https://therevelator.org/). The magazine funded by Center for Biological Diversity offers reporting and analysis at the intersection of politics, art/culture, conservation, climate change, economics and the future. 

                                   Biodiversity Losses: Impacts and Insights

                                                    PWJ February 2023  

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was a landmark international agreement adopted by over 190 United Nation member states in 1992. It set guidelines for countries to protect biodiversity. The latest CBD conference was held in Montreal in December 2022. Delegates approved a UN agreement to focus on 27 biodiversity targets. The most prominent of these targets is protection of 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030.   

This 30-30 goal will be a challenge in increasing the estimated 17 percent or so of the planet’s land and roughly 8 percent of its oceans that are protected through laws and restrictions. Countries also agreed to manage the remaining 70 percent of the planet to try to reduce biodiversity losses and to increase private-sector responsibilities for disclosing biodiversity risks and impacts from their operations. 

This conference on biodiversity, and the even higher-profile conference on climate change just a month earlier in Egypt, signal growing international engagement for difficult tasks of moving beyond mere research and goal setting. Significant in these recent climate change and biodiversity agreements is increased recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights and roles. The clear message in the Montreal biodiversity agreement is that indigenous-led conservation approaches must become much more the norm for the future. 

Why this increasing emphasis on indigenous concerns and leadership? Indigenous communities tend to be more vulnerable to biodiversity losses and adverse climate changes. Also, these communities often have traditionally had closer relationships with their surrounding biodiversity.   

The natural world never comes alive for many, because they don’t have direct and vital interactions with it that start from childhood. Indigenous communities, including many native-American cultures, often have more members with these direct and compelling experiences. Some of these elders retain and pass along enduring memories and stories that demonstrate heightened respect for all of Earth’s inhabitants.    

Botany professor and Potawatomi Nation citizen, Robin Wall Kimmerer, stresses that we can hardly gain ecological sensitivity if we cannot even imagine what the path toward this feels like? Our relationship with the natural world cannot heal until we experience it more profoundly and learn many of its lessons.  

The wonders of the natural world can easily be pushed aside for many people by their childhood and later influences. Messages from the mass media and peer pressures can glorify more materialistic desires and ambitions. The natural environment, when considered at all, becomes viewed almost entirely as means or products for human consumption. The negative impacts of climate changes and biodiversity losses can seem far from the priorities or practical daily cares for many Americans. 

Recent native-American authors are sharing contrasting biodiversity stances and narratives. Kimmerer explains that improved science education must bring learners into greater intimacy with a natural world fraught with mystery, wonder and creativity. She believes that to better understand other life forms, so unlike our own, can be a humbling and deeply spiritual pursuit. 

Pueblo/Tewa professor Gregory Cajete in his book Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence states that indigenous ways of knowing concentrate on all four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion and spirit. Traditional science privileges one or possibly two of these ways of knowing and seldom integrates the other dimensions for improved human learning. European settlers arriving in America seldom cared to listen and learn from indigenous cultures that had lived for millennia in more physical and spiritual harmony with their environment. Cajete claims that the sciences and worldviews of this continent's First Peoples offer key perspectives for meeting current and future ecological challenges.  

Traditional Ecological Knowledge by Melissa K. Nelson (Editor) includes many chapters by indigenous authors, including Kimmerer and Cajete. The book explains holistic and broader approaches for ecological sustainability, including language, art, and ceremony for healthier human-environment relations. Concepts and practices such as “honorable harvesting” promote these healthier relationships. This indigenous harvesting advice often emphasizes practices of taking only what you need, minimizing potentially harmful harvesting consequences, using fully what you harvest, expressing active thankfulness for the life forms that are taken, and reciprocating these gifts through future efforts to nurture and sustain these natural wonders.  

 

Some Americans, beyond those residing within or deeply influenced by indigenous cultures, have traces of these more holistic values for ecological sustainability. Those with deeper ancestral roots or personal experiences in rural areas may have accepted certain indigenous or Depression-era attitudes such as “Waste not, want not.” Rural and small-farm lives long ago might appear to have demanded a lot of sacrifices in material and other advantages. My interviews 20 years ago with my own family elders often included their recollections of having had in many ways a richer and more fulfilling life then associated with their closer interdependence with the natural world. 

 

Future climate crises and biodiversity losses will no doubt force some shocking and difficult challenges in Louisiana and elsewhere. One important question will be how we respond to these losses and crises over time. I hope that Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinoir Ostrom is correct in her assessment of human potentials. She believes that humans more often respond to scarcity and crisis with strategies of cooperation and sharing. Morbid individualism, or ignoring what other life forms need to survive, turns crises into tragedies, according to Ostrom. Perhaps we need to value the ecological insights expressed by indigenous and native-American thinkers as much as those who have more elite scientific credentials. 

                                       Another Kind of Planetary Threat 

                                                          PWJ January 2023

Scientists analyzing the history of our planet Earth have described profound climate and biological changes due to meteoroid collisions. Major collisions have contributed to or directly resulted in extinction for certain then-existing plant and animal species.    

Meteoroids are fragments from asteroids, comets, planets or moons that range in size down to very small dust particles that burn up in the millions entering the Earth’s atmosphere each year. Much larger fragments or rocks can survive atmospheric burning as meteorites. 

Astronomer Gonzalo Tancredi has estimated that space rocks measuring about 33 feet wide can be expected to enter Earth's atmosphere every six to 10 years. Fortunately, meteoroids as large as the Tunguska, Russia event in 1908 occur much less frequently. The mere grazing effect of this passing meteoroid, estimated at 300-600 feet diameter, flattened 800 square miles of Siberian forest with an energy blast about 180 times the effect of the Hiroshima atomic blast of 1945. The consequences from Earth-bound meteoroids depend on the angle of atmospheric entry and location of their impacts, as well as their size and composition.  

The last decade has brought increased concern related to scientific forecasts concerning potential meteoroid collisions with Earth. There is even an annual Asteroid Day on June 30. The day is part of a UN-sanctioned global awareness campaign starting in 2014 to educate people about asteroids and possible means to protect our planet from very damaging meteoroid impacts. 

A truly significant accomplishment for our NASA space program occurred on September 26 of this year. A space mission called DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) resulted in a bulls-eye hit on the small asteroid Dimorphos to determine if this impact could shift the space rock’s pathway. Dimorphos is about 525 feet in diameter and orbits a five-time larger asteroid called Didymos that is 6.8 million miles from Earth. 

The Planetary Science Division of NASA was elated by this successful space vehicle collision, but their much more important goal was to shift the asteroid’s pathway or orbit. According to NASA, DART’s minimum goal for successful orbit change of Dimorphos around Didymos was 73 seconds. Early data suggests that this minimum benchmark was exceeded by more than 25 times. Dimorphos’ approximately 12-hour previous orbit was reduced by about 32 minutes. 

International coordination has been obvious throughout this vital space mission. The Light Italian Cube Satellite for Asteroid Imaging provided by the Italian Space Agency flew within 35 miles and a few minutes after DART’s impact on Dimorphos to survey the impact and consequences. The HERA Project by the European Space Agency is planned in about four years to do much more detailed surveys of the two asteroids, particularly Dimorphos’ crater from DART’s impact. 

Many of us grew up fascinated by the mission and exploits of the Federation in the sixties TV program, Star Trek. The DART mission represents a first-ever human feat, successfully changing the pathway of a celestial body, if only for a tiny asteroid and in a small way. The implications of this “small step” and “giant leap” by humanity might be almost as profound as Neil Armstrong’s words from the Moon in 1969. We might be able within a reasonable period to spot very damaging meteoroids threating Earth and to be able to divert these.  

I was hardly a scientist or much of an engineer long ago, and I eventually settled more into a policy analyst role. Policy analysts study potential institutional goals and the various programs or means that might be undertaken to reach these goals. NASA space exploration has many potential worthwhile goals. Which goals and programs have more desirable results given obstacles and the vast resources that must be expended?  

The glitter of commercial space exploration by Musk, Bezos, and others can be intriguing, but the space missions and actual accomplishments of American and global governments interest me more. Corporate or private interests obviously accomplish important human goals, but these interests can be overly self-serving and myopic at times. Witness the “greenwashing” by certain corporations in proclaiming environmental accomplishments. 

Think tanks and policy analysts study governmental agencies such as NASA to determine their capabilities and weaknesses to perform key social functions relative to the potentials offered in the private sector. Certain social priorities do not generate significant marketable interest in the private sector, and for a variety of reasons.    

The public’s confidence in governmental institutions, even our judicial or court system, has declined markedly in recent decades or years. It’s easy to find fault and be frustrated at their inability to conduct more effective and efficient usage of taxpayer funds. Perhaps though, we can fail to recognize their major accomplishments and celebrate these. NASA receives much more positive recognition than many other government agencies that also make key contributions to the quality of American life. You have to be a “devil’s advocate” these days to say much of a good word about government programs. Yet we depend so critically on many of these programs and resources that simply badmouthing these from an uninformed distance accomplishes very little. I salute those who are able to maintain their sanity and try to make federal government initiatives more responsive and effective for the public. 

                   Paddling and Hiking in the Minden Area  (2022)

Consider adding Minden to your list of potential weekend or holiday destinations. With inflation and relatively high gas prices now, many have had to budget their leisure spending and consider affordable options closer to home. Minden deserves serious consideration for those who value multiple outdoor venues within an easy twenty-minute drive.   

 

Back in 2017, I profiled diverse recreational activities available at Lake Bistineau State Park, south of Minden. The park’s equestrian trail and disc golf course supplement the camping, hiking, biking, birding, and fishing options found at most state parks. Hiking trails there include the Willis Homestead (3.8 miles), Blue Wing (1.2 miles), Koasati (2.0 miles), Pintail Loop (1.3 miles) and the Discovery Circle (.4 miles). The park’s website and Facebook page describe special events held there during the year.  

 

The Webster Parish Convention and Visitors Center has been spotlighting the area’s many outdoor attractions, and particularly at the Caney Lakes Recreation Area, along Bayou Dorcheat, and at Lake Bistineau State Park. On an October weekend, I stayed in Minden to hike the Sugar Cane Trail at the Caney Lakes Recreation Area and to engage in this fall’s Bayou Dorcheat Open Paddle. The Webster Parish tourism folks and the Bayou Chapter of the Ozark Society have been collaborating in recent years to host paddling outings where participants in a variety of non-motorized watercraft spend hours working up a sweat and enjoying the sights along several parish waterways.               

 

For kayaking, canoeing, and paddle boarding enthusiasts, there are racing competitions for men, women and children in various locations in this region. Just one was the Sixth Annual 7.7-mile River Rat Paddle Challenge on the Ouachita River in October. Open paddles, though, allow participants to decide whether to go full out or, more commonly, take their time to enjoy the quiet and captivating scenery along the route.   

 

The Bayou Dorcheat Fall Paddle started in October 2020 and attracted 186 kayakers. This October’s event didn’t attract quite as many participants, but it did draw individuals from Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida. At least a few people rented kayaks or canoes for the event from the co-sponsoring Dorcheat Bayou Rentals. Others of us left our watercraft at the starting point on the bayou at Dixie Inn, drove south to the Sibley area, where we parked our vehicles, and then rode in event vans back to Dixie Inn. We began the paddle at about 8:30 am and were expected to reach the endpoint downstream six miles by 1 pm.  

 My tentative goal with my small 8’6’’ kayak was to stay in sight of the lead kayakers throughout the three hour or more paddle. Until the final thirty minutes, I was able to do so. With dry weather from late July, Bayou Dorcheat was considerably lower than normal and required more intensive paddling. I was more than ready to see the finishing point and to enjoy the fish fry, refreshments and live entertainment awaiting us there. 

 

If I had an arm and shoulder workout on this Saturday event, it was a less strenuous hike for me the afternoon before on the Sugar Cane National Trail, less than ten miles north of Minden. This six-mile trail circles the upper lake at the Caney Lakes Recreation Area. The swim beach and day use area there are closed much of the year (Labor Day until Memorial Day Weekend), but several hiking and biking trails are open and especially appealing as the leaves begin to change colors in October. The area’s cash drop box ($5 daily use) is just inside the park’s entrance, and the trailhead is off the left fork of the entry road and about 3/8 mile from the fee station. 

  

Several recent reports from Sugar Cane Trail hikers cited overgrown conditions and a few tree obstructions, and these proved accurate. This trail is a well-established one, though, and perhaps it has been or will soon be groomed. It’s rated as a moderate hike or mountain bike ride, but I wouldn’t recommend the latter for other than skilled cyclists until trail repairs are completed. 

Drought lately meant a dry, hard and fast path that Friday. A number of small creek crossings and low spots suggest wet feet are likely after rainy weather conditions. The main trail is named for a time when sugar cane was grown in the area. That seemed improbable to me during the first part of my counterclockwise circuit as I encountered heavily pined hills. Eventually I reached boggy bottomland where agricultural production seemed possible. Much of this six-mile trail offers great vistas overlooking Upper Caney Lake.

 A setting sun argued against my exploring other than the main Sugar Cane Trail. Shorter and intersecting trails there (Kona’s Run, The Lost Man/Woman, and Clockwork Orange) made me wonder about the stories or the imagination behind the name choices for these trails.