A Lifeline of Sand
Restoration Turns Back the Clock for Louisiana’s Barrier Islands

When coastal scientist and native Mississippian Karen Westphal needs to regain her perspective on life, she heads to Louisiana’s barrier islands. ”It’s where I feel most connected to the environment,” she says. “To stand in the wind, walk the beach, wade in the waves — it’s a spiritual as well as a scientific experience.”

Westphal, now with the National Audubon Society after working years on coastal change and hurricane studies as a university research associate, has known these small scraps of land flung into the Gulf of Mexico since she herself was little. Typically, she says, a Louisiana barrier island consists of salt marsh fronted by a narrow beach that may crest in a small dune. The largest of the islands is less than a thousand acres; the highest unrestored island rises no more than eight feet above sea level. Yet these islands play a giant’s role in coastal Louisiana’s ecology and geography.

CWPPRA

Louisiana is blessed with an abundance of natural resources. Approximately 40 percent of the coastal wetlands of the lower 48 states is located in Louisiana.

This fragile environment is disappearing at an alarming rate. Louisiana has lost up to 40 square miles of marsh a year for several decades - that's 80 percent of the nation's annual coastal wetland loss. If the current rate of loss is not slowed, by the year 2040 an additional 800,000 acres of wetlands will disappear, and the Louisiana shoreline will advance inland as much as 33 miles in some areas.

This prompted Congress to pass the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) in 1990. It funds wetland enhancement projects nationwide, designating approximately $60 million annually for work in Louisiana.

Project List

The CWPPRA Task Force annually develops a list of high-priority projects to be constructed. To date, eighteen such priority lists have been formulated. The projects funded by CWPPRA all focus on marsh creation, restoration, protection or enhancement.

PPL Reports

Site

The Louisiana Coastal Wetlands Conservation and Restoration Task Force Web site contains information and links relating to coastal restoration projects in coastal Louisiana.