Canard Brake

Catahoula Parish, Louisiana

FORGE is working with the Roots Imperative to reforest land degraded by commodity farming practices in areas where farming is not reliably profitable due to increasingly severe seasonal flooding.

Canard Brake, located in Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, was deforested in the 1960s for commodity soybean and cotton farming. In recent years, as seasonal flooding increases, crops have repeatedly been lost prior to harvest. The land, no longer suitable for farming, is now being valued as a critical piece of a growing wildlife refuge in Catahoula Parish.

Adjacent to the Dewey Wills Wildlife Management Area and close to Catahoula Lake, the land plays an important role in linking habitat areas. Catahoula Lake is recognized as a wetland of international importance (RAMSAR), and serves as the most important inland wetland in Louisiana for migratory waterfowl.

The return of bottomland hardwood forest is intended to optimize the sequestration of carbon while also creating critical biodiverse habitat for migratory birds and other animal and plant species.

Bottomland hardwood forest was once the dominant ecosystem but now occupies only two percent of its former range in the LMAV. The reforestation maximizes biodiversity, with species selected according to soil moisture along a fine gradient across the site.

FORGE is measuring and monitoring soil organic carbon and carbon accumulated in above ground biomass as part of a long-term research project, to better understand the how reforestation of bottomland hardwood contributes as a carbon sink in the fight against climate change.