Grass Roots Restoration

College of Education Assistant Professor Pamela Blanchard traveled to Grand Isle with students, teachers, and administrators from Lafayette Middle School and Southern Living magazine to help restore the damaged Louisiana coastline. Spearheaded by Grand Isle Port Commissioner Wayne Keller and LSU AgCenter extension service agent David Bourgeois, this planting was a joint effort of the LSU Coastal Roots Project, Lafayette Middle School’s Adopt-An-Island Project and the Grand Isle Coastal Plant Resources Project.

A group of eight middle school students accompanied by Lafayette Middle School faculty and parents began the day by crossing over to from Grand Isle to Fifi Island by boat. They met with Stephen Bender, a senior writer for Southern Living Magazine, and a Southern Living photographer. Over the course of the next couple of hours, students were photographed and interviewed while transplanting 60 red mulberry, 100 wax myrtle, and 10 black mangrove plants. The Bourgeois family, Keller and the LSU Coastal Roots project grew and supplied the 170 plants for the project.

Bourgeois has been instrumental in establishing the LSU Coastal Roots Project in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. Through its Adopt-An-Island Project, Lafayette Middle School has been working with Keller over the last several years to plant restoration foliage in areas that have suffered erosion problems on and near Grand Isle. Lafayette Middle was the only school in the nation awarded the Environmental Hero Award by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2006.

The Coastal Roots program is transitioning from the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program to the LSU College of Education and LSU Department of Horticulture. Blanchard and horticulture faculty member Ed Bush hope to bring together the College’s community ties and relationships with school systems to involve students and teachers in ecological stewardship efforts across the state.

Look for the article in the summer 2007 issue of Southern Living magazine.