Group is Awarded Grant To Plant Trees at The Bayou Sauvage Refuge This Winter

May 10, 2022 New Orleans, La.

A partnership between Common Ground Relief, Inc. and the Louisiana Iris Conservation Initiative (LICI) has received a New Orleans-based Ella West Freeman Foundation grant to do a significant tree planting this winter at the Bayou Sauvage National Urban Wildlife Refuge in New Orleans. The grant will be used to purchase 1,000 tree seedlings with supplies for the refuge.

Photo: The funds from the Ella West Freeman Foundation will cover the expense of tree seedlings and nutria guards for 1,000 trees. Volunteers from the two groups will plant the live oak and bald cypress tree seedlings.

This year's tree planting project will continue a multi-year partnership between Common Ground Relief, Inc. and LICI at the refuge for tree plantings and Louisiana iris plantings. This past fall and winter they worked together to plant over 1,900 potted trees and tree seedlings at the refuge.

Photo: Volunteers are seen planting trees at the Bayou Sauvage refuge in December 2021 among dead Chinese tallow. Other volunteers working during the summer killed the tallow trees using the hack and squirt method of applying a herbicide.

LICI board of directors member, Gary Salathe, said, "This tree planting, like last year's, will be a community-wide effort to reforest areas of the refuge that are still struggling to come back from Hurricane Katrina damage. We appreciate this investment in our city's future by the Ella West Freeman Foundation. Our partnership will effectively use the money entrusted to us for this project."

A few thousand Chinese tallow trees will need to be killed to prepare this year's tree-planting sites, as was done last year.

LICI is starting back up a weekly Monday morning work day on May 23, 2022. Small groups of volunteers will work from 7:30 AM until 11:30 AM at the refuge each Monday morning to work on tallow tree eradication using the hack and squirt method of applying a herbicide. If you would like to volunteer for this or have any questions about volunteering, you can send LICI an email with your contact information at: licisaveirises@gmail.com.

Mike Glaspell's Hummingbird Photos During The 2022 Iris Bloom

April 23, 2022 Lockport, La.

Each year one of the Louisiana Iris Conservation Initiative's (LICI) volunteers at the Lockport, La. boardwalk, Mike Glaspell, sends in his photos of hummingbirds on the Louisiana irises as they are in bloom. "Mike is an amateur photographer who produces professional photographer quality photos," says LICI board of directors member Gary Salathe. He reports that followers of the LICI Facebook page wait patiently for the group's Facebook postings of Glaspell's photos. "We welcome and encourage him to send us as many of his photos as possible," Salathe says.

Glaspell is also a birder. He lives a short distance from the boardwalk in Lockport, so he regularly visits it two times a day. His photos of other birds, including bald eagles that live in his area, are favorites of birder hobbyists in southeast Louisiana.

Here are some of Mike Glaspell's hummingbird photos taken at the Lockport, La. boardwalk during the iris bloom there in March and April 2022:

LICI's Recap of the 2022 Louisiana Iris Bloom

April 21, 2022 New Orleans, La.

The Louisiana iris Conservation Initiative (LICI) was able to plant 6,000 wild I. giganticaerulea species of the Louisiana iris in area refuges and nature preserves from June 2021 to February 2022, according to LICI board of directors member Gary Salathe. He said that LICI accomplished its goals for the year by using local volunteers since the COVID 19 pandemic shut down out-of-state college students from coming in to help. In pre-pandemic times, the students came to southeast Louisiana to help with plant restoration projects in the marshes. They were motivated to assist in the tremendous effort to rebuild the wetlands and accrue service credit hours.

LICI's projects rescue irises threatened with destruction and then relocate the irises to area refuges and nature preserves. In the process, they restore the irises in areas where they once were plentiful. Achieving their goal for this year was a challenge because the last two years required many more volunteer events of 6 - 8 people from the local area to accomplish what 15 – 20 out-of-state college students could do in just one outing, according to Salathe.

Photo: Local volunteers working on a LICI iris rescue in July 2021.

Another challenge LICI faced in 2021-2022 in meeting their iris planting goal was their taking on a major tree planting project at a US Fish & Wildlife Service refuge. The refuge is also home to one of their most significant iris restoration projects. "The tree-planting project not only diverted our attention from rescuing and planting irises but took up huge blocks of our volunteers' time," Salathe said. He added that a significant positive was that the volunteers played a crucial role in reforesting an essential area of the refuge after other volunteers led by LICI killed off thousands of Chinese tallow trees. The tallow tree is an invasive species that out-competes native trees and crowds out the Louisiana irises.

What also added to the difficulty of matching the 8,000 Louisiana irises LICI rescued and planted in the 2020-2021 season was that a mighty Hurricane Ida hit southeast Louisiana on August 29, 2021. "We spent many volunteer hours helping get many of the refuges' boardwalks back in shape after the hurricane-damaged them," Salathe says. The good news was that the irises at only one of LICI's projects were significantly set back from the hurricane. The rest recovered in time for this spring's iris bloom.

Photo: An example of the damage that Hurricane Ida did to one of LICI's iris restoration projects is these photos of the Louisiana irises at the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Joyce Management Area's Swampwalk boardwalk near Ponchatoula, La. The image on the left is before Hurricane Ida and on the right is a photo of the same area two weeks after the hurricane.

As the iris bloom began in late March of 2022, LICI's volunteers, including LICI board member Paul Christiansen, switched hats from iris rescuers to iris public relations specialists. One of LICI's partners on many projects, Common Ground Relief, worked with them to create the second annual interactive google map titled "Louisiana Iris Viewing Locations 2022". This map had sixteen locations where the public could see wild irises in bloom. LICI ranked the sites on the map from "The Best" to "Very Good."

When LICI did a Facebook posting of the map, it reached over 47,000 people. Over 17,000 people downloaded the map. The excitement it created resulted in numerous news reports about the locations found on the map in area newspapers, social media, and TV news shows. More people than ever went out to the sites - most of which were locations of LICI's iris restoration projects - to see the irises bloom. It was a massive win for all involved, including the landowners that saw attendance pick up at their sites.

Photo: College students from Iowa State University are shown in March, 2022 planting irises into containers at the LICI iris holding area in New Orleans. They had rescued the irises that morning as the first LICI iris rescue for the 2022-2023 season.

Since late January, the college student groups have begun to return. "We have already completed our first iris rescue and have two groups coming at the end of June that we hope will fill up the remaining containers at our iris holding area with irises for this fall and winter's plantings," Salathe says.

Many new sites have requested irises from LICI. The group also wants to add more irises to their existing projects, so they have set a goal to get at least 8,000 irises rescued and planted during the 2022-2023 iris rescue and planting season.

Here are pictures from the iris bloom in March and April 2022 at locations on the LICI/Common Ground Relief map of places to see irises blooming. Many of the sites listed are LICI's ongoing iris restoration projects:

Photo: LICI's volunteer, Mike Glaspell, once again took some great photos at the Lockport, La. boardwalk during the iris bloom there.

Photo: LICI board of directors member and volunteer, Paul Christiansen, sent in some really nice photos to the LICI Facebook page of the blooming irises at LICI's Bayou Sauvage refuge project.

Photo: "Once again the naturally occurring Louisiana irises on the Boy Scout Road trail in the Big Branch National Wildlife Refuge did not disappoint", Salathe says.

Photo: LICI's volunteer, Henry Cancienne, took his annual tour of iris locations across south Louisiana again this year sending LICI pictures almost every day. This photo was taken just before sunrise at the Bayou Teche National Wildlife Refuge boardwalk.

Photo: This photo is of the irises blooming at the Town of Jean Lafitte boardwalk, home to a multi-year LICI iris restoration project. The irises there took the biggest hit from Hurricane Ida, but still managed to produce some blooms as they struggled to come back.

Photo: The irises in LICI's project at the Cajun Coast Visitor's Center in Morgan City, La. are in their second year. They are beginning to put on real show in the swamp at the entrance to the visitor's center.

Photo: The irises blooming in LICI's project at the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Joyce Management Area's Swampwalk near boardwalk did not disappoint. "It confirmed that we made a good decision declaring it #1 on our map of places to see wild blooming irises", Salathe says.

Photo: The irises at LICI's Grand Isle, La. iris restoration project brought people to this hard hit community helping businesses as they try to come back from Hurricane Ida.

Photo: LICI's new project at the Recreation District #1 / Pelican Park near Mandeville, La. surprisingly bloomed during its first year. Salathe said, "Although this picture is not very impressive, what is impressive and is very exciting to us is that the park director has given us permission and encouragement to fill the entire shoreline of this detention area with our rescued irises for as far as you can see in the photo." The plan is for them to grow them out for future LICI iris restoration projects.

Photo: The irises at LICI's project in the Mandalay National Wildlife Refuge near Houma, La. are doing great and are expanding.

Photo: The irises in "Iris Grove" at the Northlake Nature Center near Mandeville, La. are expanding again after being knocked back by high water in 2021.

Photo: The irises in LICI's project at St. Bernard State Park are only in their second year, "but they really put on a show this spring when they bloomed", according to Salathe.

Photo: The irises blooming in City Park at the town of New Iberia, La. are shown in April. Its only the first year of the project, but LICI has plans to significantly increase the number of irises there this year.

Photo: LICI did not plant any of the irises shown in this picture, "but I guess you could say its an iris project that we did this year that we are particularly proud of ", Salathe says. LICI's volunteers helped the National Park Service count and map Louisiana irises that they found last year growing in the middle of the Chalmette Battlefield. Info can be found here.

Photo: Louisiana irises blooming at LICI's project in Fontainebleau State Park, near Mandeville, La.

Photo: The irises LICI planted at Sankofa Wetland Park and Nature Trail in New Orleans are doing well in their second year.

You can email your contact information if you would like to get email notices of LICI's volunteer events here: licisaveirises@gmail.com

The LICI Facebook page can be found here.

Although LICI “is a bare-bones deal”, as Gary likes to say, he is quick to add that they can always use donations to their cause. They have a “Donate” button at the top of their website home page here. They are currently raising money for maintenance and supplies at the LICI iris holding area.