News

Bayou Land alwas has a great time working with Tulane's Center for Public Service.  We work with students for semester-long internships and also smaller service-learning projects.  This year CPS held a great party for it's nonprofit partners at Cafe Reconcile, and Bayou Land's Community Ambassador Julia was featured in their news blog!  Read the article and see the photo here.

Get Your Native Plants of Coastal Louisiana ID Booklet!

As part of our Louisiana Native Plant Initiative,  Bayou Land RC&D produced a Plant ID Guide and plant ID workshops.  To read more about these workshops and downloard your FREE copy of the ID Booklet, click here.   

The purpose of this guide is to help users identify common native plants of Coastal Louisiana.  These plants provide valuable habitat to coastal and estuarine communities and play a crucial role in shoreline stabilization. This effort is the first in a series of initiatives aimed at building a collaborative, open-access, community-driven resilience campaign that will offer citizens a means to take an active role in the recovery of the Gulf coastline.

If you would like a hard copy, or know of someone who does, let us know.  We've got a lot to give out to communities, but they are going fast!

Recent Events

Global Youth Servie Month

Bayou Land participated in Global Youth Service Day this year for the first time ever, but we simply had too many different youth groups to serve to have only one event.  Instead, we extended our project to become a Global Youth Service Month.  We held 7 seperate planting and storm drain cleaning events all over southeast Louisiana and with youth ranging from age 5 to 22.  We planted hundreds of native plants including; Irises, Cypress Trees, Sand Live Oak, and other grasses all across Southeastern Louisiana.  These native plants that we planted will help to stabilize the dunes and riparian zones where we planted them, as well as decrease flooding in the lots and nearby neighborhoods that we targeted.   We were also able to clean and mark 181 storm drains, which will serve to beautify the neighborhoods, prevent nonpoint source pollution from being swept into our waterways, and lastly prevent street flooding.  Read more about our Earth Day planting and other Global Youth Service Day Events here.

Earth Day fell during that Global Youth Service Month this year, which gave us a fantastic opportunity to connect kids with nature.  We planted 100 native Cypress Trees in Grand Caillou with elementary students to celebrate Earth Day on April 2oth. You can view fantastic photos from the day here.

The next day, April 21st, we headed to Bayou St. John in New Orleans where we planted native grasses along the Bayou with volunteers, and then spent the day talking with community members at Louisiana Bucket Brigade's Earth Day Festival. You can view photos and read more about that event here.

On December 19th, Bayou Land worked with Nicholls State University Students, as well as other great volunteers, to plant Cypress trees in 3 Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) lots in Terrebonne Parish.  We planted 150 trees in just 5 hours - great work guys! Click here to see photos from the day and read about the HMGP lots.

On October 27^th 41 volunteers came out to work with Bayou Land RC&D to beautify and clean up Bayou Terrebonne and downtown Houma as part of our Make A Difference Day service project; Keeping Bayous Beautiful.  The project was a great success, and we cleaned and marked 156 storm drains with the help of our volunteers! We also reintroduced Water Lilies to the Bayou area, and built awareness in the community for the importance of keeping our waterways clean! Click here to read more about the day and see our photos.

On October 20th, Bayou Land worked to clean storm drains in the Leonidas area with Loyola students as well as two Tulane CPS Service Learning students. A great time was had by all!  

Other News: Service, Gardens and more

Last summer on July 19th, 20th & 21st Bayou Land RC&D participated in Tip the Block with hundreds of ELCA Youth and other organizations. Bayou Land RC&D partnered with Green Light New Orleans and other organizations for Tip the Block, a program that organizes environmental advocacy efforts block-by-block.Volunteers from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's (ELCA) 2012 National Youth Gathering were amazing. They got down and dirty helping us to clean out and mark over 350 storm drains in New Orleans! Click here to view our photo gallery from the weekend and learn more about how to host a storm drain clean-up and marking in your neighborhood.

Community Gardens

Last spring Bayou Land RC&D helped Zion Traveler's Cooperative Center build 2 beautiful community gardens.  These 12' by 14' gardens were built by hand by Bayou Land and ZTCC members in early May.  They planted tomatoes, eggplant, carrots, green onion, wild onion, sweet peppers, hot peppers, herbs, and native pollinators (Purple Gayfeather, Coreopsis, and Purple Coneflower).    The ZTCC included caring for these gardens as part of their green-time vs. screen-time initiative.  You can click here to see Bayou Land featured in a video prepared by the ZTCC about their goal of connecting children to the environment! 

                             Brand New Gardens on May 2                                                                               Gardens on June 22



















The kids had a great time showing off the food they had grown to Program Coordinator Blaise when we he came to visit.  Here are some kids picking green onions, and Ronald proudly displaying an eggplant.  Blaise also brought some Native Plant ID guides to drop  off at the Center, and those were a big hit as you can see in third picture.

Wetlands Youth Summit 2

Last Spring, Bayou Land RC&D participated in the second Wetlands Youth Summit, hosted by South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center. WYS2 was organized for highschool students from Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Lafourche and Terrebonne to learn more about wetlands, nonpoint source pollution, and how they can help take care of Louisiana's water. It took place in Davant, LA .It was a great day of wetland education with Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences (PIES), Future Leaders of America's Gulf (F.L.A.G.), Zion Travelers Cooperative Center (ZTCC), Grand Bayou Band of the Atakapa-Ishak, and many others!

The event was written up in the Plaquemine's Gazette, and Program Director Jennifer Roberts was quoted! Click here to read the full article.