| |
Jean Landry, land steward for the Conservancy's Lafitte Woods Preserve.
Jean Landry holds a damaged photo album showing a photo of her husband's great-grandmother. The album was damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Houses left on Grand Isle, Louisiana, following Hurricane Katrina.
Damaged boats lean up against a dock following Hurricane Katrina.
Dishes are the only remains of a house following Hurricane Katrina.
Jean Landry standing on damaged boardwalk of The Conservancy's Lafitte Woods Preserve. Boardwalk and preserve were damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
All photos © Joshua Paul
Learn more
|
Up Close with Jean Landry
by Hal Herring
Photographs by Joshua Paul
The daughter and wife of oil field workers, talks about her stewardship of Grand Isle, Louisiana, life after Hurricane Katrina, and the joy brought by a prothonotary warbler.
Family ties bind Jean Landry to the island, nearly deserted after Katrina. The storm destroyed fishing boats, preserve boardwalks, homes and lives. Still, shrimpers went back to work as ecologists studied the impact on wax myrtle and other species.
Grand Isle was a birder’s paradise before the storm. If I showed up now with my binoculars, would there be anything to see?
We are the central part of the Mississippi Flyway, and we’re the first landfall for the birds coming in from a 600-mile flight. Our trees offer protection, food and fresh water. We’re still here, and the birds are coming back, stopping over, availing themselves of what we have to offer and then moving on. I saw a prothonotary warbler the other day, and it was a joy to have him in my yard.
That must have been a bright spot—you had a lot of damage to your property, didn’t you?
We had 30 inches of water in the house and about 8 feet in the neighborhood. The house was surrounded by debris, an awesome amount. I’m 5-foot-3, and it was over my head. It’s taken 175 dump-truck loads to get our yard clear of everything from water heaters to a 38-foot pleasure craft.
Wow.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I say every time I look at it. Wow.
Your family has been on this barrier island for a long time, hasn’t it?
My family came to Grand Isle from Florida in 1962 to work in the oil fields. My husband is a native—his family dates back to 1803. The last time that someone in his family left was in the 1940s, after the world war. And now, because of this hurricane, we have two children that will be leaving the area. It’s hard on Mama. This storm has changed a lot of lives.
Like your daughter’s. She lived in New Orleans, right?
She lived on Marigny Street and had 11 and a half feet of water in her house. We’re trying to see if there’s anything left to recover, and then she’s going out to Florida to finish school. She’s in mortuary school. She was a beautician in the city, but she got tired of making small talk with the customers all day.
What about the 18-some acres of rare maritime forest that you oversee? How has the storm changed the forest?
We’re the only barrier island in the gulf with a hack-berry/live oak forest. The wind really whipped the trees around and took the leaves off. It was a direct hit, but the live oaks are shorter, wider and adapted to the elements. I have not seen any blown over.
The Nature Conservancy is working to restore that forest—only about 10 percent of the original woods remain. How much difference did that make when Katrina was blowing at 187 miles per hour?
Those trees slowed the force of the water from the storm surge and served as a windbreak. It’s the trees around where I live that protected our home.
And what’s it going to take to protect and restore Grand Isle itself?
If we can preserve the marsh and help it to regrow, we can make progress. In 1962, when we would cross the Leeville Bridge looking south to Grand Isle, it was an ocean of grass. Now it’s just water.
Is that from the hurricane?
It’s from the hurricanes, the oil and gas industry, the shrimpers. The breaking up of the marsh is the reason we are going to lose 500,000 square miles of Louisiana over the next 40 years. We have to get more sediment coming into the area, instead of the sediment-rich waters flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River.
You come from a long line of oil workers—your dad, brothers, husband and a son. What are dinner table conversations like now that you’re with the Conservancy? Does the impact of that industry on the marshland come up?
My family had to make a living, and that’s the route they took. We all understand that none of us are driving to work in a horse and buggy. Yet we all appreciate the need for conservation. Even the birders who help me work on the nature preserve, so many of them derive their living from the oil industry.
Besides the work on the preserve, what’s the Conservancy doing to protect the island?
The Conservancy is working right now with the Grand Isle Port Authority and Nicholls State University to reintroduce oysters and oyster beds to control erosion along the coast—these are not commercial oyster beds; they are just for erosion control.
What difference will that make?
Well, I’ve read that every mile of marsh lessens the depth of
the tidal surge by one foot. So if we’d had that 7 miles of marsh between us and New Orleans, maybe my daughter wouldn’t have lost everything she owned and be moving to Florida.
