Louisiana is home to many of the Fund's most significant efforts and achievements in reforestation and carbon sequestration. Louisiana contains almost half of the wetlands found in America’s lower 48 states. The Fund and its partners have helped to safeguard more than 200,000 acres here.

Projects:

Master Plan For Louisiana's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has asked the Fund to help create a "master plan" for the state's wildlife management areas and refuges. Using our expertise in strategic conservation, real estate acquisition, plan implementation and mapping, we'll provide a blueprint for LA DWF to strategically and effectively move forward on management, planning, and acquisition priorities for its wildlife management system.

Learn more about this project >>

Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge

Did you know that the Upper Ouachita area is the site of the largest floodplain restoration project in the United States? In the 1960's, due to rising food prices, much of the native forest was replaced with farm land. But it turns out the land wasn't optimal for farming and efforts are now underway to return the river and forests to their natural state. We've been working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and local land owners to acquire lands and restore the forests at Upper Ouachita.

Learn more about our efforts here >>

 Lake Pontchartrain Basin

Since 1990 The Conservation Fund has been working to protect and restore Louisiana’s coastal wetland and associated upland habitats, like those found around Lake Pontchartrain.

The Fund, in partnership with the Richard King Mellon Foundation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, created the Big Branch Marsh and Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuges, which lie in the heart of Louisiana's commercial and recreational fisheries region. In 2000, the Fund added an additional 1,300 acres to the refuges.

In 2008, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), with key funding assistance from Ameriprise Financial, purchased more than 7,200 acres within the boundaries of Joyce Wildlife Management Area (WMA) from The Conservation Fund. The 23,000-acre Joyce WMA sits five miles south of Hammond within the Lake Pontchartrain basin and consists mainly of cypress-tupelo swamp. Alligators, deer, rabbits, squirrel and waterfowl, like mallards and woodducks, call this area home. An elevated boardwalk at the northwest corner of Joyce WMA provides visitors easy access to view wildlife and vegetation within the ecosystem.

The Fund’s long-term commitment to coastal wetlands within the Lake Pontchartrain Basin is an on-going project. We continue to work together with the state of Louisiana to preserve vital coastal wetlands across the region.

Maurepas Wildlife Management Area

The Conservation Fund helped the State of Louisiana establish this nearly 68,000-acre expanse of cypress-tupelo swamp as a wildlife management area, and in 2009 added an additional 1,700 acres.

Purchase of the 1,700 acres by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries was made possible through a grant from Entergy Charitable Foundation. Entergy’s donation of nearly $300,000 marked its first gift in a new environmental initiative. Additional funding came from the state and a federal grant through the North American Wetlands Conservation Act.

This project builds on The Fund’s long-term commitment to protect and restore coastal wetlands within the Lake Pontchartrain / Lake Maurepas basin. Since 1990, the Fund and its partners have protected more than 127,000 acres of coastal wetland and associated upland habitats in the state. In 2000, we assisted the Richard King Mellon Foundation in securing one of the largest unfragmented blocks of cypress/tupelo swamp in the United States, which was designated as the Maurepas Swamp Wildlife Management Area.

Louisiana contains almost half of the wetlands found in America’s lower 48 states. The conservation of this area protects a primeval remnant of the rapidly vanishing lower Mississippi Delta ecosystem.