Atchafalaya Basin

Perrone Heralds the Plight of America’s Most Bountiful Wetland

by Mimi Greenwood Knight

GERARD PERRONE IS A MAN on a mission, an unwavering campaign to educate the world about the peril of our Louisiana wetlands. Like primatologist Jane Goodall entrenched with her chimpanzees in Africa, Perrone has devised a way to imbed himself in the Atchafalaya Basin. The wildlife photographer and eco-activist has made himself such a part of the scenery that his fellow swamp inhabitants go about their lives as he quietly and patiently chronicles their behavior and living conditions.

Here are some fast facts about Perrone’s home-away-fromhome. At almost a million acres, the Atchafalaya River Basin is among the most ecologically varied regions in the United States. Larger than the Florida Everglades and five times more productive than any other river basin in North America, it’s home to 65 species of reptiles and amphibians, over 250 species of birds, and more than 100 different species of fish and aquatic life, not to mention panthers, black bears, bobcats, nutria, mink, fox, muskrats, beavers, otters, and raccoons. The basin houses the largest nesting concentration of bald eagles in South Central United States, has an estimated average annual crawfish harvest of nearly 22 million pounds, contains the largest contiguous bottomland hardwood forest in North America, and is the largest overflow alluvial hardwood swamp in the country.

Perrone wants you to know all that bounty is at risk of extinction.

A Hammond native, Perrone attended St. Paul’s School in Covington before completing an art degree at LSU and a masters at Rhode Island School of Design. After a two-year internship in New York City, he made his way back to Louisiana to try his hand at teaching in college, all the while perfecting his skills behind the camera lens. Disillusioned with his teaching career, Perrone opened a small photography studio, bought a home in Uptown New Orleans, and began renovating historic homes in the area. His photography received recognition with an exhibit at the Contemporary Art Center. But a divorce and other life changes called for a change of scenery. Perrone found himself next in Oregon where he became involved in environmental activism. “I lived in a cabin in the middle of nowhere,” he says. “I was there for four years, and it changed the way I thought about everything.”

Perrone left Oregon determined to be part of the solution, made his way around the entire country—twice—and finally landed back home in Louisiana. “This is the land I grew up on, but having been away and come back, I didn’t see anything the same,” he says. “The Atchafalaya was right in my backyard and it wasn’t—isn’t—getting the attention it needs. This is the largest watershed in the country and one of the top five wetlands in the world. The basin feeds the entire Gulf. As goes the Atchafalaya, so goes the Gulf—and beyond.” Perrone spent six years traveling into the basin and back documenting the changes he saw there with his camera. But it’s difficult terrain to navigate.

“I was spending so much time getting to the places I wanted to observe that I only had a couple of hours of light once I got there,” says Perrone. “I didn’t want to feel like a visitor. I wanted to become part of the basin, so I could really experience it and learn about it. I decided, if I wanted to get serious, I had to design a boat that would allow me to gain access to the hard-to-reach area and camp there. He set to work designing his self-contained “WetLand Explorer” in a design that came to include a 20-foot, flat-bottom boat small enough to get into all the places he wanted to reach but big enough to become his floating campsite. It took Perrone two years and two prototypes to perfect the design for his WetLand Explorer. He enlisted the help of Hanko Boat Builders out of Morgan City to construct the craft from his plans and a team of seamstresses to create the tent that would protect him from the elements. He equipped the boat with a toilet, 25 gallons of water, electricity to power fans, a spigot for water, and enough gas to go 250 miles roundtrip—and was awarded a U.S. Utility patent for boat/tent design. The craft allows him to spend four days and three nights comfortably imbedded in the basin documenting everything he observes; it is large enough to sleep three comfortably. “Now, I had to decide where I wanted to go,” says Perrone. “I wanted to study and catalogue the patterns of change within the Atchafalaya and foster a sympathetic awareness of the area. My challenge was the basin itself, which is so large and diverse.

Within the almost million acres, the terrain goes from old-growth cypress to freshwater marsh, then the Port of Morgan City, then brackish marshland, pure salt marshes, and finally the Gulf. Within that area, there are people earning their living by harvesting what the basin has to offer from fish, crabs, oysters, and shrimp to oil and gas and lumber. These people are part of the story, too.” It took Perrone two full years of exploration to choose an area to study. He finally chose a spot he deemed to be a microcosm of the Mississippi Delta.

“I realized that just as man is harvesting the bounty of the Atchafalaya, so are the birds,” he says. “If I could follow the birds, photograph them, and study their patterns, they’d lead to the larger bounty. The outlook for our coast is uncertain. In an area this flat, any amount of sea level rise can take out three ecosystems. Is there an answer? Is it too late? I don’t know. But if we become sympathetically attuned, we can learn from what’s happening, document the changes, and appreciate the natural wonders of the moment along the way.”

Perrone established a non-profit he named The Nature Study Project. “My idea is a very different type of eco-tourism,” he says. “It’s not about tossing marshmallows to alligators but taking the right people out into the swamp for full-day—or overnight or multi-day—immersive experiences where we can really slow down and live in the environment of the basin, where they can see the instability of this fragile ecosystem that’s so important to our existence on Earth. It’s particularly intriguing to birdwatchers, so that’s my target audience right now.”

Meanwhile, Perrone continues to chronicle the changes in the Atchafalaya through his pictures. “Photography is just heightened observation,” he says. He also befriended shrimpers and crabbers, who welcomed him onto their boats. “I want to tell their story, too. Their nets bring up a sampling of the Gulf, and their knowledge of the Atchafalaya— gained over generations—is vast.”

His work to document the plight of the Atchafalaya Basin, the last wetland of its kind, is starting to garner attention. Perrone was recently able to bring a journalist and photographer, working for the non-profit Southerly Magazine, on a three-day wetlands immersion experience, which they documented in a story on SoutherlyMag.org. He’s joining forces with The Nature Conservancy, Freshwater & Wetland Conservation, and a private landowner (with 9,000 acres of wetlands) to develop a nature outreach program for inner-city kids and veterans. “I have other irons in the fire, too, including an interactive mobile nature study fieldtrip where participants go out to collect nature specimens that we’ll study in magnification and document together. I want to restore the childlike wonder of nature. We are challenged with sustaining our one-of-akind ecosystem. The Atchafalaya Basin is the canary in the coal mine. What’s happening here can happen worldwide. We need as many people as possible to hear that message and help spread it.” Visit NatureStudy.com for information GERARD PERRONE and to book your tour.