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| Since The Beginning | www.alligatorbayou.com |
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Honors science students from Baton Rouge's St. Joseph's Academy have been "digging" the swamp at Alligator Bayou, and we sure do appreciate their conservation efforts. On March 11, 2000, a boatload of shovel-wielding young ladies from this all-girl's school cruised out to the levee overlooking Cypress Flats and dug holes to plant nearly 50 cypress seedlings donated by Gulf Coast Plantsmen and the Louisiana Department of Forestry. The same day, as part of an ongoing project, some of the students took water samples at six sites in the Spanish Lake Basin. 
Last year, the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program inspired the cypress tree planting and donated water testing chemicals and equipment to the school. They also trained students in testing procedures to enable them to experience nature and the natural sciences with greater knowledge and understanding. Currently funded by the Water Watch Program of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, the water-quality testing provides Alligator Bayou and Bluff Swamp Wildlife Refuge with periodic statistical analyses of the basin's health. The data gathering, as a watershed stewardship program, will help monitor progress in the basin's restoration program and highlight potential problems that need closer attention in the Alligator Bayou-Cypress Flats watershed. 
Environmental education is a central mission of Bluff Swamp Wildlife Refuge & Botanical Gardens, the national non-profit organization that acquired and is preserving and restoring 901 acres of Bluff Swamp in the Spanish Lake Basin. |