A staff person from Louisiana Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries' Noxious Plant Program, an $8 million program to control water hyacinth and giant salvinia, will be a guest speaker at the next Conservation Meeting of the Acadian Group of the Sierra Club on Wednesday June 19. We have invited the department to send a representative to listen to community concerns on this issue and present information on their program.Citizens have expressed concerns regarding the use of herbicides on aquatic and shoreline plants in and around public bodies of water in the state. Some expressed concerns include human health impacts, impacts to wildlife especially birds, as well as total habitat availability along the shoreline and systemic ecological effects. Our organization recently was made aware of a concern at Lake Martin where shorelines have been sprayed on an ongoing basis. Our recreational outing for the month of May to the Lake followed on a member's presentation so that we could investigate further.
We will also be hosting a special visit from the young people of Ride for the Future who are traveling exclusively by bicycle from New Orleans to Houston to explore and highlight stories of the effects, challenges and solutions stemming from use of fossil fuels, environmental justice, and sustainable strategies for development and clean energy.
Our meeting starts promptly at
6:30pm. All members, friends of the Sierra Club, and the general public
are welcomed to attend, listen, and participate.
To Sign up for this event and follow the Acadian Group through Facebook, click here.
I was impressed with the turnout for this meeting considering it was the largest(about 30 people) I have witnessed since attending the meetings this year.
ReplyDeleteI am new at the Sierra Club and look forward to working with concerned and involved members who dedicate time and personal resources to bring awareness to the public of important natural and enviromental issues.
I will be emailing Mr. Perret with important questions regarding what triggers the application of seven incidents of herbicide application at Lake Martin in a 4 month period(Dec.20th,2012-April15th,2013). These 7 incidents created an algae bloom, and resulting fish kill, which is still ongoing.
One very important question I have for him is: who manufactures the chemicals(my quess: Monsanto) and considering these chemicals are all EPA approved, one must consider that we have a conflict of interest consisdering that the current head of the EPA is an ex-CEO of Monsanto. (BIG SURPRIZE!)
Although the LDWF claims to be protecting the public boating interests by providing access via "plant control", one must ask the glaring question: why apply so much herbicide(now, 15 years later) to create an algae bloom and resulting fish kill, when the initial proposal in 1997 was to decrease the plant mass to protect the fish?
Bear in mind in the last 15 years at Lake Martin, I have in the course of my swamp tour businesss witnessed the destruction of the natural beauty and ecology the swamp around Lake Martin, along with of hundreds of acres of button bush, as a non-targeted casualty, and almost all of the floating mat of plants on 3 sides of Lake Martin.
For more info regarding my personal and ongoing documentation of plant control at Lake Martin, you can visit the link below:
http://louisianaswamp.blogspot.com/2009/04/birds-have-returned.html