On Saturday we went down to Port Fourchon to work with BTNEP, a wetland recovery program. Our task was to plant swamp grass on a piece of land that had been articficially recreated. The idea of the whole project is to recreate and rebuild the wetland and bayou areas that have been eroded over the years. Doing this creates a buffer from future hurricanes and hopefully prevents future eroding. However, there has been a lot of damage to the areas and progress has been slow.
It was definitely a long day- we planted 4,000 grass plugs and by the end of it we were all dirty and tired. However, it was rewarding to think that in some small way we may be part of the restoration of such an important part of land. For the people living in areas like Port Fourchon, it is their homes and their towns that are dissapearing, though to us the idea of our hometowns literally sinking into the ground or being washed away is completely foreign. At some points it was definitely hard to think that what we were doing was actually going to make a difference because our planting was so little compared to the huge amount of land (a football field) that is dissapearing every minute. However, it is small things like our planting that will eventually make the difference between the land being preserved or being washed away forever.