WHAT IS CAUSING COASTAL WETLANDS LOSS IN LOUISIANA?
One would hope that if the cause of America’s Wetland’s loss is simple, the solution might also be simple. Unfortunately, this is not so. Oh, yes, each of the many causative factors is rather simple, but for any given location, different combinations of factors are at work and each different combination demands different solutions. The following are 18 of the problem-causing factors that we recognize today. I. Levees. Before levees, there were predictable variations in the alluvial environment – plants and animals (including native humans) adapted to and lived by those cycles. Each spring, our mighty Mississippi River swells as a result of melting snow and spring rains in its drainage basin – 1.25 million sq mi, or 41% of the continental U.S. (31 states and two Canadian provinces). In days gone by, the river frequently swelled above her natural levees and spread out across her flood plain, becoming a very wide river and flooding much of the area between New Orleans and Lafayette. Since
