The Louisiana Forestry Association is hosting its annual convention around a year after the state saw unprecedented damage from several wildfires, including one here in Southwest Louisiana known as the Tiger Island Fire.
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Have a dead tree in your yard from the dry summer last year? It could be infested with beetles, making it more likely to fall. Lawmakers are looking for an emergency declaration to get people funds to remove dangerous trees before that happens.
After the drought of 2023 that cost the state millions of dollars in agricultural losses, more than 12 million trees across the state are dead because of it. Those dry conditions make the perfect home for the ips beetle to dig into the bark, further weakening the tree.
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The sound of leaves crunching underfoot follows Cakey Worthington as she makes her way into a forest of pine and oak trees in the Atchafalaya Swamp. She stops at a rebar marker placed in the ground then walks up to a tree nearby.
“We come back every five years to remeasure all the trees in this location,” she said, cicadas singing nearby.
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The Louisiana Legislature’s House Emergency Beetle Subcommittee held its second meeting at the state capitol on August 14 to discuss the state’s infected trees and find potential solutions.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service is announcing a funding opportunity through the hazardous fuels transportation assistance program to reduce wildfire risk, expand and create market opportunities, and support local jobs. This program is available to local businesses and partners that remove hazardous fuels from national forests and transport the material to be processed for wood products or services.
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The Emergency Forest Restoration Program (EFRP) provides technical and financial assistance to owners of nonindustrial private forestland whose forestland was damaged by a qualifying natural disaster event.
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Louisiana agriculture generates approximately $3 billion in sales each year, but in most years agricultural productivity is negatively affected by hurricane damage. Louisianans are familiar with the devastation and loss of life and property that can accompany a hurricane event as the state experiences, on average, one hurricane every three years. The total economic losses from a single hurricane can reach tens of billions of dollars, while agricultural losses can exceed one billion dollars. Louisiana is a major agricultural producer for the United States, but the structures, livestock, and crops are highly exposed to extreme wind and flooding during hurricane events.
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LSU AgCenter researcher Richard Vlosky has helped secure $300,000 in funding for a project to support a regional mass timber supply chain connecting underrepresented populations and communities in the South with consumers and developers along the Eastern Seaboard and Mid-Atlantic.
Vlosky, professor and director of the Louisiana Forest Products Development Center in the LSU School of Renewable Natural Resources, is part of a team that brought in the 2024 U.S. Forest Service Wood Innovations Program Grant.
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Friday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service is making $190 million available to help private forest landowners adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change and retain working forestlands.
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Rose Fisher Greer and her daughter are the only basket weavers left in the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians, a tribe based in Central Louisiana.
To practice her craft, Greer needs river cane. For that, she has to go into Kisatchie National Forest, and she’s the only person in her tribe willing to make the journey. At one patch just off the side of the road, a few feet into the forest, the river cane grows in clusters of green stalks several feet high.
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The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) has published twelve draft forest management prescriptions for nine Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) that are now available for review.
The above detail proposed methods to improve, maintain, and sustain wildlife habitat while providing quality wildlife-oriented recreational improvements and growing quality timber resources for the long-term.
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State lawmakers want Gov. Jeff Landry to declare an emergency to address millions of dead and dying pines that insects have infested and now pose a risk to people, property, power lines and roads.
But officials say not much help is available to homeowners who want to remove trees that are certain to fall down and cause damage.
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Concerns are growing statewide over a bark beetle infestation.
Trees, especially pines, are vital to Louisiana’s economy. Here in Southwest Louisiana, Vernon, Beauregard and Allen parishes contain miles and miles of pine tree forests and farms important to their economy.
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In the coming days, the state’s House Emergency Beetle Subcommittee of the House Committee on Agriculture is scheduled to host its first meeting at the state capitol. The panel is set to convene on July 9, and will address the devastation of Louisiana’s forest industry due to an infestation of beetles.
In 2023, the LSU Agriculture Center reported that 50,000 acres of forests in the state were burned due to wildfires last summer, costing $71.4 million.
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On June 18, Leonard Laborde of St. Landry was arrested on two counts of timber theft, two counts of criminal trespass, and one count of simple criminal damage to property.
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