Wildlife Gets New Habitat on Lake Pontchartrain South Shore
Volunteers Help Plant Grasses to Break Up Concrete with Wetland
Original article on The New Orleans Advocate
BY AMY WOLD
AWOLD@THEADVOCATE.COM
The plants sticking up through the muddy ground at Bayou St. John on Tuesday afternoon didn’t look like much, but in one, maybe two growing seasons, they should transform this area into a mini wetland.
Although just a little under a half-acre in size, the wetlands creation project on the Lake Pontchartrain side of the flood control structure could become an oasis of habitat for fish, crabs and birds in an otherwise bleak expanse of concrete floodwalls and rock protection along the south shore.
On Tuesday, about 50 volunteers from Harrah’s, Entergy and other companies showed up for what should be the final major step in creating a wetland where the bayou meets Lake Pontchartrain through the planting of wetland grasses.
There will be some fine tuning done in the future, such as lowering some areas of the marsh or additional plantings, but for now the created marsh is a lot more inviting than what was there before, said John Lopez, executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, which organized the marsh creation project.
“You just had a bare concrete embankment,” he said. “Which is just poor habitat.”
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Original source: The New Orleans Advocate
