The good, the bad and the gators
Posted: Wednesday, September 21 at 09:16 pm CT by Miguel Llanos
A young American alligator approaches the photographer’s camera during a tour of Hurricane Katrina damage in Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge. Click “Play” above to hear U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist James Harris describe how wildlife and land were impacted by the storm.
BAYOU SAUVAGE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, La. -- It’s not where I would have expected to find young alligators hanging out. But the spot between a rail line knocked out by Katrina and an abandoned spur was where they’d been since the storm blew through.
For James Harris, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who found them, it was a pretty darn good sign that the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge would come back to life.
Neither Katrina, nor the flooding that followed, nor the railway and levee work going on 100 feet away was enough to wipe out these 18 or so gators, who ranged from a few months to 3 years old.
But these residents of the refuge aren’t out of the woods just yet. The park, which is the only national wildlife refuge inside a city’s limits, is just 16 miles east of downtown New Orleans and sits next to New Orleans East, a mixed residential and industrial area.
Normally, the drive to this wilderness oasis is pleasant enough. But after Katrina, the view from Interstate 10 is that of wasteland. Driving past New Orleans East the roads and abandoned cars are covered in a dusty grit. A few days earlier this area was under water, much of which has since been pumped into the marshland waters of the refuge.
The waters where the gators were hanging out had an oily sheen that Harris wasn’t sure was natural, from underground methane, or from the floodwaters, which could contain sewage and pollutants.
The flooding is one of two major concerns described to us by Harris. The other: Elevated salinity from gulf water that the storm dumped into the refuge’s freshwater marshes. That extra salt is already killing off marsh grass, leaving tell-tale burn signs on the tall stalks.
Agents had been busy with the search and rescue of Katrina’s human victims, so three weeks after the storm the service still hadn’t done water testing in the refuge or even estimated what percentage of its wildlife was severely impacted.
When will that happen? Hopefully within three weeks, Harris says, but he’s quick to add that “it depends on what Rita does” -- referring to Katrina’s sibling.
“The big question is that we don’t know how much water we got from New Orleans East,” he adds. A lot of floodwater with sewage and other sediment could also cause nutrient blooms that deplete the marsh waters of the oxygen needed by fish.
Most of the refuge has two feet more of water than normal. That’s hard to notice but James says it will make the difference for wildlife like alligators, which burrow and nest near the water.
“It displaces a lot of wildlife,” he says, “just like water in New Orleans displaced people.”
The storm also ripped out pieces of marsh, spitting out chunks onto Interstate 10, residential areas and the refuge’s shoreline. That means less habitat for the wildlife survivors and fiercer competition.
“It’s survival of the fittest out there,” Shelley Stiaes, the assistant manager at the refuge, tells us, adding that alligators will turn cannibalistic if necessary.
Besides the long-term issues, the refuge staff will have to deal with shorter term problems like a five-mile field of debris -- everything from plastic bags and chemical containers to ships -- along one side of the park.
Harris is hopeful that most of the refuge will have recovered within five years. It might not look exactly the same, he says, but it will still be a wildlife refuge.
The 23,000-acre park is one of five national refuges in southeastern Louisiana pummeled by Katrina. Across Lake Pontchartrain is the Big Branch National Wildlife Refuge, where damage includes large stands of forest knocked down. “Some of that I won’t see return in my lifetime,” Harris says.
At the mouth of the Mississippi River is the Delta National Wildlife Refuge, which was completely under water but is now coming back.
Harris notes that some folks like to say that if you leave Mother Nature alone she’ll recover. “To some extent that’s true,” he says, “but it’s also a simplification. An event as large and widespread as this is a seminal event for wildlife populations and habitat.”
And Stiaes has a ready answer for our final question of when will Bayou Sauvage reopen? “Let’s just get through hurricane season first.”
A silver lining in the muck
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