destroying levees and restoring the environment

The clock is turning back on 16,000 acres purchased in the 1960s. Bulldozed and dried out, this land lost its forests, wetlands and marshes for levees and a giant soy bean farm.

The Ouchley brothers plan to undo this damage as best they can:

There is a growing awareness that Louisiana’s levees have exacted a huge environmental cost. Inland, cypress forests and wetlands crucial for migrating waterfowl have vanished; in southern Louisiana, coastal marshes deprived of regular infusions of sediment-rich river water have yielded by the mile to an encroaching Gulf of Mexico. Some scientists have suggested opening levees south of New Orleans so the Mississippi River can flow normally into the swamps. full article