H A B I TAT
Since 1999, The Nature Conservancy has been acquiring land at the heart of Grand Isle, planting and cultivating the oak-hackberry forest known as Lafitte Woods Preserve.
The Forest at the Heart of the Island
THE LAFITTE WOODS NATURE PRESERVE STANDS STRONG AS A PROTECTIVE HAVEN ON GRAND ISLE Story by Kristy Christiansen • Photos by Paul Christiansen
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ifty miles due south of New Orleans, Grand Isle stands boldly as the front line of defense for Louisiana’s hurricane-battered coast. In normal times, the southern end is an eight-mile-long expanse of beach, the northern side a lush tidal marsh. Nine months after Hurricane Ida’s eye plowed through the island, it’s hard to tell one side from the other. The storm breached the southern end’s burrito levee in several places, spreading the sand like a blanket from beach to marsh. The green lawns and purple bluebonnets are gone, washed away with the mountains of treasured human ephemera lost to the storm. The west end bore the brunt of the damage. Here, collapsed camps still lie in heaps beside newly rebuilt, brightly painted homes hoisted seventeen feet off the ground. For many residents of this vulnerable and battered island, the hope for recovery and resiliency lies at its center, where the landscape shifts and thick stands of trees stretch toward the blue sky overhead. Known as the Lafitte Woods Nature Pre42
serve, the largely oak-hackberry forest is some of the last remaining undeveloped land on Grand Isle. Since 1999, The Nature Conservancy has protected the trees, which serve as vital habitat for wildlife, including bi-annually migrating birds—which travel up into North America in the spring to
fewer predators. They fly fifteen hours in from the Yucatan or eighteen hours from South America, and need food and water.” Grand Isle is their first sight of land after the long journey. Birders from all over the world visit the island during peak migration in late April to witness
“I CAN’T TELL YOU THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE THAT SAID, ‘THE FOREST SAVED MY HOME.’” —JEAN LANDRY breed and south to the tropics in the fall. Grand Isle’s forest serves as a rest stop in the Gulf, a refuge providing ample seeds and fruit, as well as shelter among the trees. “The forest is unique along the Gulf. It’s the center of the Mississippi flyway,” said Jean Landry, program manager for the Nature Conservancy. “The birds start jumping off right at dusk, when it’s cooler to fly, so they use less energy and there are
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the colorful species flitting through the trees. If they are lucky, birders will arrive in time for a “fallout,” a rare event when large groups of migrating birds fly into strong thunderstorms. Exhausted, the birds literally fall out of the sky, landing in the safety of the woods. Landry recalls her children walking out of the house one morning and being greeted by a blue carpet of indigo buntings on their front lawn. She has also seen fallouts of Ruby-
throated Hummingbirds and Prothonotary Warblers. Detailing the history of the Lafitte Woods, Landry explained how the Nature Conservancy got its start on Grand Isle in 1999, “Our first acquisition was a donation. We got fourteen acres from Mr. Grilletta from New Orleans, who inherited the property on a bad debt.” From there, the Nature Conservancy received a grant from ExxonMobil to plant trees on thirty acres of land formerly used as an Exxon campsite. Landry led the effort to plant a miniature forest on the property, which included persimmon trees, mulberries, hackberries, sweet bays, honey locusts, and toothache trees. The last serves as the host tree of the giant swallowtail butterfly and gets its unusual name from its leaves, which have similar properties to Novocain when chewed. The Nature Conservancy continued to expand its property, adding acreage known as the Sureway Woods and a half-acre from the Govan family out of
