This story was originally published by Reasons to be Cheerful
Bald cypress trees have loomed over Louisiana’s landscape for thousands of years, their feathery leaves offering shade from on high. In a state that contains 40 percent of the wetlands in the Lower 48, the cypress has always been a natural companion for residents. It thrives in soggy bottoms that would smother most trees, lives for hundreds of years under the right circumstances, and brings comfort to Louisianans “like warm bread at home,” as Blaise Pezold, an ecosystem restorationist, puts it. As the state tree, the cypress is “as legendary [in Louisiana] as the chestnut tree in Appalachia.”
Now, it’s also helping to bring back the wetlands. Across southern Louisiana, the bald cypress is at the center of efforts to reverse the crisis of coastal land loss that has cost Louisiana 2,000 square miles of coastal land over the last century. Over the next 50 years, that figure could swell to 5,000 square miles without intervention.
That’s where Pezold and others like him come in. A partnership of local environmental organizations is nearing the end of a four-year state- and federally-funded initiative to plant 30,000 trees in Louisiana’s Central Wetlands, an area where the crisis is acutely felt. Spanning Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, the Central Wetlands were depleted by logging and the opening of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a 1960s-era canal that allowed saltwater into the freshwater ecosystem. During Hurricane Katrina, in 2005, the canal carried a deadly storm surge into St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward. As a result, it was permanently closed in 2009. The wetlands’ salinity soon fell back toward historic levels, setting the stage for restoration.
Since 2019, the Central Wetlands Reforestation Collective — a partnership that includes the Meraux Foundation, where Pezold leads the coastal and environmental program; the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL); Common Ground Relief; CSED of the Lower 9th Ward; and Pontchartrain Conservancy — has seized the opportunity to put cypress trees back where they belong and help reverse the region’s rapid land loss.
For thousands of years, the Mississippi River snaked through Louisiana, carrying sediment gathered along its winding journey south that it deposited along its banks with each bend. As sand, silt and clay accumulated into soil, plants took root, giving structure to what was once loose debris. Slowly, the delta formed, thousands of square miles of land without any bedrock beneath it. In those swampy wetlands, forests of bald cypress and tupelo grew.
After colonization, though, the once-wild river was tamed by a strict system of levees, preventing the introduction of new sediment to supplement the old. Cypress forests were logged to frame out homes. Canals and shipping channels cut through wetlands, carving a path for saltwater to rush in and choke vegetation. Invasive nutria and wild boar chewed up much of what remained. Sea levels rose and forests faded. So did the land.
In the face of all that ecological devastation, planting a tree may seem trivial. Planting them by the thousands, however, can help restore wetlands across southern Louisiana, stabilizing soil in places where it’s most vulnerable to being washed away.
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“Planting a tree is like an act of defiance here as we’re slowly being sucked away into the ocean,” says James Karst of CRCL, which has put more than a million native plants in the ground since 2000.
To date, CRCL has planted two-thirds of the 15,000 trees that comprise its contribution to the Central Wetlands project. Many of those trees have been planted by volunteers, who are ferried into the swamps by airboat. Rather than sourcing its seedlings from regional nurseries, the organization formed its own nursery — and its seeds come directly from community members, plucked from the branches of coniferous cypress trees in New Orleans and beyond. It’s a communal effort, organized around a tree whose roots run deep in this region.
“Our wetland ecosystems, which are the backbone of our economy and our culture and our livelihoods, are reliant on the bald cypress tree more than any other plant,” says Andrew Ferris, who runs CRCL’s native plants program.
Through its seed-gathering campaign, CRCL is bringing thousands of locals along for the ride. To grow its nursery, the organization asked residents to send in cypress seeds from their yard — or anywhere they can be found — with a label to identify their origins. The seeds — spherical pods about the size of a large grape that grow green on the tree and turn brown when they fall — are then kept in cold water for a month by Ferris and his colleagues to simulate the tree’s natural process, before they germinate and begin to grow in spring. By collecting from community members, CRCL is guaranteed genetic diversity and trees well suited to local conditions, Ferris says. And in the process, more people are gaining a personal connection to the issue of land loss and the promise of reforestation.
Last November, Aicha Keita and nine of her classmates in Tulane University’s Black Student Union were looking for a way to make a positive environmental impact, so they set out to gather cypress seeds. With bins and gloves in tow on a sun-soaked afternoon, they walked toward Tulane’s Uptown football stadium and found a selection of land-locked trees marked off by a CRCL staffer for collection. The students pulled branches close to reach their seeds, the first step toward catalyzing long-term change. It felt like they were nurturing the building blocks of restoration, Keita says.
“Any way that you can restore hope through actionable steps and making change, it feels great,” she says.
In the Central Wetlands, where reforestation is carrying on apace, those seeds might someday take root on the same ground as generations of cypress before them. Already, the project has exceeded Pezold’s wildest dreams. “We’re seeing our success in real time,” he says, walking back centuries of degradation to re-establish what the river built long ago. As the collective works to complete the Central Wetlands reforestation, its partners are looking for other sites where they can continue their cooperative approach to restoration.
The trees in the Central Wetlands are still young, sheltered in white plastic tubes to protect them as they grow. But when Ferris visits sites where CRCL planted trees a decade ago, he can see glimpses of what the future holds — for these wetlands and others throughout Louisiana.
“These trees are massive,” he says. “The land that they are holding in place is solid as a rock.”
Those moments inspire him to keep planting, so that someday he can bring his grandchildren to see a cypress-and-tupelo forest in all its glory.
“‘This area was a degraded marsh when I was in my twenties, and now we can sit in the shade of these trees,’” he’ll tell them. “I’m eager to have that experience.”
The post Can a Legendary Tree Keep Louisiana’s Coastal Lands From Slipping Away? appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
