Coastal Louisiana is losing land more rapidly than anywhere else in the U.S. due in part to climate change. That’s threatening the fabled conservation comeback story of the brown pelican, which some researchers call 'dinosaur floofs.'
One location was Raccoon Island, where Carloss, then a teenage field assistant at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, remembers tossing fish from the beach to feed chicks, as a sort of surrogate parent.
Erosion is a natural process, and over the course of thousands of years, most barrier islands rise and fall. Unlike volcanic islands, there is no bedrock, only layers of silt washed down the Mississippi Delta., “are impermanent, precarious places, at the mercy of wind and washing water – making, shaping and destroying them.”
On another day, the biologists steer their aluminum boat past an unrestored island called Philo Brice. Mangroves grow on low inundated land, and pelicans nest in the upper branches, chicks craning as parents land with meals of fish.It’s still a decent breeding habitat, as long as the soil holds and plants remain above water. “In five or 10 years, it may or may not be here. It’s that rapid,” said Slaton.
The brown pelican “is a symbol of Louisiana, just like the eagle is a symbol of America,” said Rue McNeil, executive director of the Northlake Nature Center in Mandeville, Louisiana. “It was put on the state flag because that particular bird represents a lot of strength.”The disappearing islands aren’t only a problem for the birds.
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