Go Zero® donors know trees help to clean the air we breathe by capturing CO2, but did you know that our 2010 Go Zero restoration locations are helping secure a bounty for birds?

High above the Go Zero restoration areas at Lake Ophelia and Grand Cote national wildlife refuges in central Louisiana, a boisterous and vast winged migration quacks and honks its way from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico and back. Known as the Mississippi Flyway, this blue highway in the sky services millions of ducks, geese, shorebirds, blackbirds, sparrows, warblers and thrushes.

Deforestation in America

Each fall, hundreds of thousands of migrating birds descend upon the Gulf Coast region to escape the North’s freezing temperatures, plump up on quality grub, and select their mates for spring breeding. Many find shelter within the parks and wildlife refuges of central Louisiana. But over the past century, their wintering habitat has changed. Louisiana’s once lush forests and waterways have been cleared, dammed, leveed and drastically altered, leaving less habitat for our partners in flight.

“Every day, we hear about the impacts of deforestation in the Amazon or Indonesia,” says The Conservation Fund’s Louisiana state director, Ray Herndon, “but it’s happening in the Gulf Coast area too. Migratory bird populations have lost more than 24 million acres of bottomland hardwood forest habitat over the last century along the Red River and lower Mississippi River valleys. Habitat destruction is more pronounced here than in any other area of the United States.”

According to scientists from Environmental Synergy Inc. (ESI), decades of conversion from forest to marginal farmland and the myriad flood-control measures that followed resulted in a land mass that today supports less than 5 million acres of bottomland hardwood forest. “No other wetland system in North America has suffered such a tremendous reduction in area,” says Carol Jordan, ESI’s president. “Much of the remaining forest exists in fragments that are too small to support the birds, fish and other wildlife resources that were once abundant.” That is bad news for the birds whose spring and fall migratory paths lead them along the Mississippi Flyway deep into the heart of central Louisiana.

Migratory waterfowl, songbirds and shorebirds all use forested, moist soil and open-water wetland habitats for nesting, foraging and taking cover from predators. During the fall and winter, these habitats flood, thus setting the table for wintering waterfowl looking to plump up on high protein nuts and other foods. In late summer, the water recedes within open-water wetland pools, creating mudflats for migrating shorebirds.

Reforestation Along The Mississippi Flyway

To help keep the bird buffets stocked along the Mississippi Flyway, The Conservation Fund’s Go Zero program partners with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to identify key tracks of land in need of restoration. After the Service carefully selects each restoration site, its biologists choose a mix of native seedlings that will help reestablish a natural ecosystem. As the forests mature, they help keep the birds fed and sheltered, and at the same time, trap carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

“Loss of forest habitat is a huge challenge for ducks, songbirds and even the Louisiana black bear,” says Brett Wehrle, Refuge Manager of the Central Louisiana National Wildlife Refuge Complex, which includes both Lake Ophelia and Grand Cote refuges. “The Go Zero program is providing tremendous benefits to wildlife and people. It is an incredible luxury to get these sites restored, and then to step back and watch the habitat change and the wildlife return. We simply couldn’t do it alone.”

Will these efforts help restoration associated with the Deepwater Horizon spill?

Restoring native forests in the Gulf Coast region is more important than ever, as birds forced from contaminated marshes must look for healthy habitat nearby to rest and feed.

Moving forward, The Conservation Fund is committed to helping our partners in federal, state and local agencies as they work to restore this damaged ecosystem. As these agencies plan to acquire healthy new habitat for birds and wildlife affected by the spill, we continue to play an active role. To date, we have protected more than 300,000 acres in the region.

With your help, we can do even more.

You can help.

Donate now to help the Fund’s Go Zero program restore forestland in the Southeast.

Photos: Mallards taking off / Serega, iStockphoto.com (top); Birds in flight, Grand Cote NWR/Photo courtesy USFWS, Central Louisiana Refuge Complex (bottom)