WHAT CAN BE DONE TO CONSERVE
AND PROTECT LOUISIANA’S COASTAL WETLAND FORESTS?

The Coastal Wetland Forest Conservation and Use Science Working Group (SWG) made recommendations to the Governor’s Office regarding actions that the state could take to conserve and protect these forests. Details of the recommendations by the SWG can be found under Reports. Below are suggestions for what foresters, scientists, landowners, and others can do.

What Professional Foresters Can Do

It is the inherent responsibility of all professional foresters to ensure forest sustainability and strive to meet the landowner’s objectives. Professional foresters can do much to conserve and protect Louisiana’s coastal wetland forests and act in the long-term best interest of landowners, including the following:

• Recommend harvesting of healthy forest areas only when the forest stand can readily be regenerated leading to long-term establishment of stands that will maintain sustainable productivity into the next generation of forests.
• Create written forest management plans that are explicit about how management will be sustainable and how regeneration and long-term wetland forest establishment will be guaranteed.
• Indicate what necessary and feasible alterations to site hydrological regime may help ensure future productivity.
• Explore alternative revenues or management options for sites not likely to regenerate and become established.
• Work with scientists to develop more reliable regeneration for a range of difficult site conditions.
• Apply the Sustainable Forestry Initiative to help to protect and conserve these forests for landowners, citizens, and future generations.

 What Research Scientists Can Do

Research in Louisiana’s coastal forest has not kept pace with past problems much less those that are now upon us. Part of the reason is that we have not always appreciated their importance of our coast and have not understood the many functions and services they provide. We are only now beginning to see the worth of coastal wetland forests and will continue to increase our understanding of their values and importance through new and expanding research. Detailed numbers of coastal wetland forest acreage and the condition of these forests are still not available. Some coastal forests are rapidly disappearing and many others are degrading. We know that some cannot regenerate and become established, if harvested. Research scientists can assist in ensuring the future of these forests in a number of ways.

• Continue to reveal and interpret the data that exists.
• Establish new research related to the effects of hydrologic regime and soils on the growth and productivity of these forests, both young and old.
• Establish research to provide better data on seedling and coppice regeneration and stand establishment under a variety of site conditions and harvesting regimes. This research may also help establish new methods of regeneration for difficult sites.
• Discern new methods of evaluating and mapping condition classes and forest health both on the ground and by remote sensing techniques.
• Evaluate what the public knows and how much they are interested in conserving and protecting these forests.
• Conduct additional research in coastal forests to understand the important links to other functions and services that are crucial to wildlife, fisheries, clean water, and coastal processes.
• Investigate conservation alternatives acceptable to forest landowners, including set-asides, easements, and sale of timber rights.

 What Coastal Forest Landowners Can Do

Perhaps the most important and crucial key to protecting, conserving, and continuing to use Louisiana’s coastal wetland forests, lies with the landowners and their families. They have a great personal connection to these lands and they hold the public’s many values of these lands in their hands. Coastal forest landowners can do much to see that these lands are protected and conserved through the following actions:

• Recognize the serious nature of the problem.
• Work to ensure that proper forest management techniques are used on lands that can be regenerated on a sustainable basis and that regeneration occurs. Application of BMP’s (best management practices) assist in reducing non-point source sediment to waterways but have little to do with proper stand management and regeneration at this time.
• Demand to know the correct state of their lands and the condition they are in relative to regeneration.
• On lands with a degraded hydrological regime, landowners should work with the state and others to further restoration efforts and regain productivity.
• Be willing, if necessary, to temporarily forgo timber harvesting on those portions of their land that will not regenerate and become established under current conditions.
• Insist that professional foresters provide a written management plan that details how their lands will be regenerated after harvest and how a new forest of equal or better productivity will be established. Get a second independent opinion when their lands are frequently flooded for long periods of time, especially during the growing season. 
• Provide research scientists with information on flood frequency, flood depth, and changes of forest conditions over time. Allow land access for research
• Look for alternative income sources (instead of timber harvests in coastal forests).
• Consider placing lands in a “forest reserve” system or some other category of compensation, if developed by the State.
• Consider donating your land to a conservation organization that will provide protection and allow you to reap tax benefits.

 What Everyone Can Do

• Recognize the serious nature of the problem with Louisiana’s coastal wetland forests.
• Contact federal and state senators and representatives, as well as local officials about helping to save existing and restore degraded coastal wetland forests in Louisiana.
• Recognize that we can continue to conserve and protect these resources only for those coastal forests that are sustainable.
• Voice you support for efforts to conserve and protect these forests in surveys of opinion and to the news media, friends, and those at work.