A trip to another world

Saturday, I went to a remote part of south Louisiana, about an hour and a half from where I live, to the White Lake Conservation Area. It’s home to 71,905 acres acres of freshwater marsh and to the large, above-named freshwater lake. The southernmost boundary of the conservation area is just thirteen miles north of the Gulf of Mexico. Driving south down increasingly narrow roads, not seeing even a gas station for miles and miles, I had a lunar feeling of loneliness. The land is flat and wet and empty. I came to a place very few people want to, or can, be. It’s wet land with vast horizons.

Every so often, after driving a mile or so, a small house appeared, isolated, defiant, mysterious. There are very few trees. You can see without restriction far into every direction. It’s landscape stripped bare. The sky has a large presence.

What the eye sees here.

Everything seems precarious about this land. It sits at some places just five feet above sea level. It feels more like actual sea level. This in a part of the country that’s prone to hurricanes. With little to protect the land and its few people from great winds and storm surge, security is a word I wouldn’t imagine is applied often here.

Still, there’s a sense of adventure, a kind of thrill, in exploring a landscape that’s so severe and underpopulated a mere 50 miles from where I live. I wonder what it’s like to grow up in one of these few, isolated houses, nothing around you for miles except flat, wet land. As a kid, a first visit to a large city like Lafayette must be astonishing.

The last “town” I passed is called Gueydan. The sign posted as I entered says, “Duck Capital of America.”

My destination was the ranger station for the White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area where we—Acadiana Master Naturalists in training—will meet.

White Lake, center, with blue balloon marking it.

Twelve of us assembled before the station house at about 9:30AM. The sky was heavy. We all brought raingear and boots in case, because part of the day will be a walk down a nature trail. Several of us are birders, and we were hoping to see one of the many species that reside here, the most famous of which, I found, is the Whooping Crane. I hadn’t done any research before my visit, so I didn’t know about the Whooping Cranes here. It was a surprise. I hadn’t thought about Whooping Cranes in years.

Someone my age—79—or thereabouts—may recall the effort to save the Whooping Crane (Grus americana), which is native to America, many years ago in the late 1950s and 1960s. Thinking back, I don’t know of any other conservation effort in that era that captured the nation’s imagination like that one—a possible exception being the Bald Eagle. There was a concerted effort to save this animal from extinction. How did this sense of urgency come about? What roused the country to be so obsessed about a bird? We weren’t, Americans,—with some exceptions—hugely occupied with the environment. I remember, as a teenager, the sense of alarm I felt learning that only a few of these Whooping Cranes—such a strange name, I thought—were left. Worry was in the air. I, a self-obsessed American teenager, was worried. The US even issued a stamp in 1957 featuring Whooping Cranes.

The slow but steady effort to stabilize and increase the Whooping Crane population began in earnest. It was, in the scope of things, successful. The number in America grew from about just 20 birds in the early 1940s to about 600 today. That story of that effort includes remarkably inventive strategies, including an ultralight aircraft used to establish a migration route for the Whooping Crane between Wisconsin and Florida.

The Whooping Cranes at White Lake today were introduced. They’re part of a long-term plan to help restore the general population in Louisiana. There once were Whooping Cranes that lived and bred in Louisiana, but by 1950 there were no more. In 2011, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries began a reintroduction project. They released 10 juvenile Whooping Cranes here, bred from eggs from birds in captivity. “Weighing 15 pounds,” says Cornell University, “the [mature] Whooping Crane has a wingspan of more than 7 feet and is as tall as many humans, reaching a height of around 5 feet.” In fact, it’s the tallest bird in North America. Today, there are 74 Whooping Cranes living and breeding in Louisiana, 16 of which are in the White Lake Wetlands. The Whooping Cranes here are non-migratory.

You can find out more about this extraordinary effort by Louisiana Wildlife & Fisheries—including fact sheets, videos and links to other organizations involved—here.

We learned all about this during a presentation that morning by Lance Ardoin, a Biologist Manager for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries. He detailed the history of the White Lake Conservation Area, including information about its nesting Whooping Cranes. We were not allowed to visit the nesting area, which, I think, was a good idea.

Photo by Louisiana Wildlife & Fisheries

Above, a juvenile Whooping Crane being released in the White Lake marsh area. The person holding the bird—and others who work with the birds—is dressed entirely in white so that the bird will not imprint on humans and so possibly be unable to connect with their fellow cranes in the wild. We want these birds to be wary of humans, too, and to avoid us, thus giving them a better chance to survive. In the past, as we know, many animals encountering humans for the first time had their trust mortally betrayed.

Below is a two-minute video of Whooping Cranes at White Lake. You can hear their distinctive call, which gives the bird its name. The brownish bird is a juvenile. (Video from Louisiana Wildlife & Fisheries.)

Ardoin said that years ago, this area, before it was a refuge, was a highly desired location for duck hunters, including the famous. “Lyndon Johnson was here a few times when he was president,” he told us. “And even a Middle-Eastern Prince.” The area is self-sustaining. That is, the refuge has to pay its own expenses, and it does that partly by issuing duck hunting and fishing permits for certain times of the year. What it has done is to create a symbiotic relationship with hunters that allows it to continue its work with the income it receives. It’s either that or shut down. Hunters are not allowed in the Whooping Crane nesting area.

After his talk, Ardoin led us on a walk down a nature trail.

Lance Ardoin with some future Acadiana Master Naturalists conducting a tour at White Lake Wetlands. Photo R. Goodman.

We didn’t see many birds, probably because we were a talkative group of twelve, and Ardoin periodically stopped to tell us about the native and invasive plants growing there, speaking loud enough so the entire group could hear.

It began to rain just as we finished our walk. I got into the car, and it started pouring. Louisiana rains can be severe. The GPS led me down hardly-traveled country roads, a different way than I took coming. It felt gothic. Dream-like.

My fifteen-year-old self encountered my seventy-nine-year-old self abruptly that Saturday. At a certain point as a teenager and young adult, I let the Whooping Crane slide from my mind, as other issues—many slightly reckless and immature—captured my attention. During that sixty-five-year interlude, though, others, more resolute, kept Whooping Cranes top of mind. They did, and are doing, the work. I drove home, optimism filling the air.