White Lake
In July 2002 the oil company BP-Amoco donated a 71,000-acre wildlife preserve known as the White Lake Property to the State of Louisiana. White Lake is managed by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Used as a hunting preserve by BP-Amoco, it’s an area of freshwater marshes, some pastureland, and cropland suitable for growing rice and crawfish. Every winter there are huge numbers of ducks, geese and other water birds in the marsh. The marshes are flooded and drained seasonally, providing food and water for the birds, and the residual rice from rice farming also provides food. The area is known as the finest duck hunting area in North America – Gueydan is the gateway to White Lake and identifies itself as the Duck Capital of America.
An Advisory Board has been assigned the task of setting out the longer term plans for managing the area, requiring a good balance between conserving the natural beauty of the area and opening it to the public. Currently there are plans for increased fishing, bird watching, sightseeing, and for a beautiful pavilion with nature walks and conservation education. BP Amoco provides money each year for maintenance and improvements, and the state collects fees for hunting, trapping, farming leases, alligator trapping, and the collection of alligator eggs.
Amoco hunting club
White Lake is accessible only by boat, so Max brought us down to the Wildlife and Fisheries offices at the edge of the lake. He introduced us to Roger Cormier who’s been managing the area for some time now. Roger got us into a mud boat and we took off down the channel towards the Intra-Coastal Waterway. After crossing the Intra-Coastal, with its big barges bearing down on us, we went a short distance farther to a small inlet. Located on what appeared to be an island in the middle of the marsh, the Amoco hunting lodge is like stepping back in time. Wings of the lodge extend out with private rooms in each wing, joined by a common sitting and dining area, along with a professional kitchen. Stuffed ducks of all kinds are everywhere, as are paintings of ducks. The interior décor is full of wood – wood paneling, wood and glass cabinets displaying ducks, and dark colors like green and mauve.
Outside the lodge is a rookery, across a small waterway. Max didn’t seem to feel that we had time to take a walk around the area near the rookery, and Chelsea and I are kicking ourselves that we didn’t take it anyway. We may try to go back and see if we can do the walk. We didn’t spend too long at the lodge, as we wanted to be back in time to see the alligator egg collecting. White Lake is an area we would love to explore more thoroughly.
Alligator egg collecting
Local alligator farms apply for a permit for collecting eggs on the White Lake area and are given a set amount they can collect. The fee is based on the number of eggs they collect. Finding the nests is step one, and these days that job is done by ultralights. The planes fly over the areas spotting the nests. The pilot drops a stake to identify the location and marks it on his GPS. Later a crew is sent out to collect the eggs. This part can get pretty exciting – the guys we met told us that one crewmember will collect the eggs while the other will frequently have to use a long pole to fend off an angry mother alligator.
There’s a strict protocol for gathering the eggs. The guys carry big plastic buckets with lids, and the eggs are layered in marshy grass that looks like wet dark hay. Each egg must be kept upright, or the fetus will separate from the egg and will die. As they pick up each egg, it’s marked with a black pen to ensure the eggs are stored correctly. The eggs are carefully placed one by one in the grass, and each layer of eggs is covered with more marsh grass. Each set of eggs must be separated by nest as well, so there may be several layers from one nest, and then just a few eggs in one layer. The plastic buckets are marked with the number of the bucket and the GPS number.
After arriving back at the collecting station, Roger sat with the paperwork, while the crew transferred each egg carefully into wire baskets with the marsh grass. Roger had to mark down the identifying numbers with each new basket – the GPS, the bucket number, and the total number of eggs. The alligator farmers pay for each egg whether it hatches or not, so those collecting the eggs want to make sure the eggs are good before having them count toward the total.
The process was tedious, but it went pretty quickly with several people working steadily. After all the buckets are done, the wire baskets are very carefully put into the transport vehicle, and are brought back to the alligator farm where they are immediately put into incubators. Even the ride back to the farm has to be taken with care, as the eggs can die if they are jostled or if the crates tip.
The whole process was just fascinating, especially after we had already seen the alligator farm in Freshwater Bayou, with the eggs already incubated and the hatchlings in the “ponds”. (Note: now we can say we have seen the whole alligator life, from birth to death, after seeing the skinning process.)
When the guys headed off to collect more eggs, Roger gave us a special treat by taking us in a short airboat ride. These are boats that can go anywhere in the marsh, on land and on water, and they are good in shallow water as well. They are extremely noisy, so all passengers must wear headphones. Roger got the airboat in the water before we climbed in, and we took off down the Florence Channel toward the IntraCoastal. It was very fun! When we returned, Roger saw that we were okay in the boat – calm, cool and collected – so he let us stay on the boat while he “drove” it right up the steep bank. It was “way cool”! That’s another thing we’d like to do again!!
Lacassine Wildlife Refuge
One of the oldest and largest of the National Wildlife Refuges, Lacassine is about 35,000 acres of marshland southwest of Gueydan, in Cameron Parish, on the way to the Gulf Coast. Max was taking the whole day off to hang out with us, so we wandered on down toward the coast, taking time to explore the Lacassine on our way down.
Talk about majestic vistas! The land stretched away as far as we could see – very wet land. Though Max said it was extremely dry (as had Roger), there were still noticeable areas of water. We did see a deer on the way out, and a turtle on the side of the road trying its best to ‘disappear’, but we primarily saw birds, birds, birds. Max was content to let us get out (it was a driving tour) whenever we saw a good flock of birds, like the roseate spoonbills, and we took time to walk out to an overlook. We knew birds better and Max knew the plants, so we had a good exchange. It was hot and humid, with a big rainstorm threatening, so we didn’t stay too long, but that would be an unbelievable place to take a sunrise bike ride, especially in the late fall or spring!
Oak Grove
After Lacassine, we continued on down Hwy 27 to the Gulf. We made it all the way to the beach, so we can say we dipped our toes into the Gulf Coast. The beaches are not wildly attractive – Louisiana isn’t known for its beaches in general. The coastline is primarily marshy, so we were amazed to see the Gulf water at all. We took a short walk on the beach, and then headed back towards Oak Grove. Max wanted us to see it, and we were tracking down a woman who might have a place for us to stay.
This whole section of Louisiana was completely wiped out by Hurricane Rita only 3 years ago, only 3 weeks after Hurricane Katrina. We saw so many familiar scenes – pilings and empty foundations where a building once stood; a scarcity of shops and houses when it was clearly a community at one time; brand new utility poles; signs of recovery. We were told that the community had recovered amazingly since Rita, but that it had been slow going. Locals were concerned about us riding this route, as they thought there wouldn’t be enough services frequently enough to keep us going, and that there wouldn’t be places to stay.
We finally tracked down the woman we wanted to see, and followed her to the local Baptist church. They were holding a youth group right then, and there was a tremendous feeling of joy, if not outright excitement, in the air. Children played happily; the women greeted each other cheerfully; food was coming in with some of the women. Chatting with the women, we discovered that the church was brand new, and was just now opening for services after being completely rebuilt following the devastation of Rita three years earlier. They proudly gave us a tour, and it really did look beautiful. We exchanged information, and two of the women volunteered to keep us on our way through, which we thought would be in about two weeks.
We headed home with Max, happy as could be. We had two more stops – one at Lake Arthur where we met a woman who can give us contacts for people in Guatemala, and one at a roadside stand where we got squash salsa (very tasty!) and yellow watermelon -another taste treat.
Follow-up Note: The brand new church and the entire community of Oak Grove, along with all the other communities down there, has now been very badly damaged by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike while we were here, and there’s doubt that the church will ever be rebuilt.