LICI's Louisiana Iris Seed Collection event at Bayou Sauvage

July 17, 2021 New Orleans, La.

The Louisiana Iris Conservation Initiative (LICI) held a volunteer event at the US Fish & Wildlife Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge in New Orleans to open Louisiana iris seed pods. The see pods were collected earlier in the week by a GulfCorps member with Limitless Vistas of New Orleans from the irises near the refuge's Ridge Trail boardwalk.

Photo: The Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge is located within the city limits of New Orleans. Its one of the few US Fish & Wildlife refuges located within a urban area, although the area of New Orleans East where the refuge is located is sparsely populated.

The area near the viewing platform of the Ridge Trail boardwalk is where LICI has planted thousands of irises as part of a multi-year project to reintroduce the I. giganticaerulea species of the Louisiana iris back into the refuge. Saltwater flooding from hurricane Katrina decimated the native iris population in the refuge.

Photo: Volunteers are shown working planting irises near the Ridge Trail boardwalk viewing platform in the fall of 2020.

Photo: Louisiana irises blooming near the viewing platform in the spring of 2021. Each of the flowers created a seed pod, which holds between 25 and 60 individual seeds.

Over the last few months LICI has had a permit to eradicate Chinese Tallow trees in the area of the boardwalk viewing platform. This evasive tree species grows faster than the native trees. The tallow trees are now shading out native tree seedlings that were planted to reforest this area of the refuge after Hurricane Katrina's high winds cleared out swaths of mature forest. The tallow tree eradication effort has been successful in opening up lengths of shoreline in the swamp to sunlight as the tallow trees have died.

The purpose of the volunteer event was to remove the seeds from the iris seed pods. The seeds will be broadcast out at a future date into the muck along the new shoreline where there is now plenty of sunlight and not many competing plants. This is being done to help nature speed up the natural process of expanding the existing irises into these new areas.

Photo: Some of the volunteers working opening seed pods at the Bayou Sauvage refuge on July 17, 2021.

Volunteers from LICI, the Louisiana Master Naturalist of Greater New Orleans and Common Ground Relief worked under a pavilion at the entrance to the boardwalk opening the seed pods on Saturday, July 17th. An estimated 6,000 iris seeds were collected by the group.

Photo: Some of the volunteers are shown with the container full of iris seeds at the end of the morning.

More information on the LICI reintroducing the Louisiana iris project at the Bayou Sauvage refuge can be found here: https://www.licisaveirises.com/post/lici-iris-planting-in-bayou-sauvage-national-wildlife-refuge

LICI Iris Rescue in Des Allemands, la.

July 12, 2021

Volunteers from the Louisiana Iris Conservation Initiative (LICI) held an iris rescue event on Saturday, July 10, 2021 along Hwy 90 near the town of Des Allemands, La. Some of the irises were planted at the Lockport, La. Elevated Boardwalk later in the morning and the rest were taken to the LICI iris holding area to be planted into containers. The irises will be planted at the boardwalk later this year after they have strengthened up by growing in the containers.

Photo: LICI volunteers working in the Hwy 90 wet area digging up the I. giganticaerulea species of the Louisiana iris. The irises are native to the area and were growing in the ditch naturally. They were remnants of what were likely once thousands of irises growing along Hwy 90 before the state began spraying herbicides thirty years ago to keep the ditches clear of weeds.

The landowner of the property where the volunteers worked has bush-hogged the ditch/wet area each year in front of his property during the dry season. Because of his doing this, it has never been sprayed with a herbicide by the state highway department. It is the only stretch of highway not sprayed. This allowed the spot to become a mini-wetland bog full of native swamp plants, including the Louisiana iris.

Photo: Over seven hundred irises were dug up from this one spot where another rescue event was held in June.

The landowner now has the property for sale and has stopped maintaining the wet area. He believes its only a question of time before the state will begin spraying it. He has encouraged us to get the irises out and relocated to a safer location.

Photo: The volunteers on the July 10th iris rescue event, from left to right: Shannon Eaton, Jessica and Mike Glaspell, Gary Salathe, Jacqueline Richard, Jamie Zeringue and Richard Bosworth.

The volunteers took out an estimated seven hundred irises from the same spot where two other rescue events have been already held. They thought they would only be digging up a few straggler irises. Instead, they spent the entire time digging irises that were either missed or were still there because time had run out in the previous events.

LICI will be holding a number of iris rescues over the next few weeks to get all of their containers filled at the LICI iris holding area in New Orleans. Gary Salathe, volunteer and board of directors member for LICI said, "We have some new locations that have asked us to plant irises this fall and winter, so we will need as many irises as we have space for."

Anyone interested in volunteering on any LICI projects can contact the group at licisaveirises@gmail.com

All of the above photos were taken and shared with us by Henry Cancienne.

LICI has a booth at the Jean Lafitte Seafood Festival

June 27, 2021 Jean Lafitte, La.

After a break of 15 years due to hurricanes and other things that diverted the attention of town leaders, the town of Jean Lafitte Seafood Festival returned in 2021. The 2 1/2 day event was a huge success, partially because it was the first festival with live music that has taken place since COVID 19 shut down everything in 2020. South Louisianians MUST have their festivals and live music, preferable both at the same time, so they were ready to come out in droves.

The Jean Lafitte Seafood Festival was the first large live music event in the New Orleans area since the COVID 19 lockdowns.

The town is interested in doing a smaller "Save the Coast" festival next April centered on their nearby Wetlands Trace Boardwalk and its blooming irises. The mayor invited a number of groups in Louisiana's marsh restoration effort to hold information booths open at the seafood festival this year as a test run of the idea. Each group was given a spot under a large canopy near the entrance to the boardwalk to share information on their projects and to let everyone know how they can help out by getting involved in. SeaGrant, Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, Restore or Retreat, Jefferson parish, Restore the Mississippi River Delta, Healthy Gulf and the Louisiana Iris Conservation Initiative (LICI) signed up and each help open a booth.

Local entertainer and celebrity, Rock'n Dopsie, of the Zydeco Twisters, helped LICI open their booth up at the start of the first full day of the festival.

In addition to information about the group and their projects, LICI's booth displays also highlighted the town's Wetlands Trace Boardwalk because it is the location of an important iris restoration project for them. The boardwalk is one mile long and winds through a cypress tree swamp. It was built in 2002 by four volunteers that were led by Joe Baucum, now deceased, who was a local naturalist and civic booster.

The poster is shown that was used in the LICI booth to explain what they do.

Joe Baucum's widow, Cindy Baucum, is a friend of LICI and has helped out at iris planting events at the boardwalk that her husband helped build. She also has plans to donate the Louisiana irises growing in a ditch on her property. Joe protected these irises from the parish road crews that regularly sprayed a herbicide on the rest of the ditches that are alongside the road, which runs for miles before it passes through their land.

Cindy Baucum found some old photographs in her records of Joe and his crew building the boardwalk. She supplied LICI with digital copies so that they could make one poster for their booth and one to be put out onto the boardwalk during the festival, which was done.

LICI's poster about the building of the Wetlands Trace Boardwalk in 2002 by volunteers Joe Baucum and three of his friends. One of the posters was put up near where people lined up to board the swamp tour boat at the picnic area midway on the boardwalk.

A number of LICI volunteers helped out holding the booth open Saturday and Sunday during the festival. They handed out brochures about LICI and its partners, signed up future volunteers and told the story of Joe Baucum and his friends building the boardwalk to people that visited the booth.

LICI's booth is shown at the Jean Lafitte Seafood Festival.

Although the music was the center of attention during the festival, the boardwalk ended up getting hundreds of visitors. There were "Wine and Stroll" stations set up along the boardwalk where a glass of wine could be purchased as you took in the sights. A local swamp tour company used the picnic area mid-way through the boardwalk as a base for short swamp tours that they gave to the festival goers using their boat.

The swamp tour boat that was used to give tours during the festival.

As Jean Lafitte Mayor Tim Kerner, Jr. said in a Facebook posting a few days after the festival, "This weekend our town took center stage. The return of the Jean Lafitte Seafood Festival was a success beyond our expectations. The vendors, chefs, local and national artists all enjoyed rave reviews from Lafitte’s record setting crowd of festival goers."