Louisiana NRCS Conservation Update
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Congress will still deliver a farm bill but it won’t be in September, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told the Kentucky Farm Bureau on Thursday, voicing what was already looking inevitable as Congress runs out of legislative days left before the Sept. 30 expiration of the current law.
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Louisiana’s largest wildfire doubled in size over the weekend but slowed to a crawl after a short bout of rain on Sunday night.
Predicted hot and dry conditions for much of the week mean the Tiger Island Fire in Beauregard Parish will likely flare up again, fire officials said Monday. The fire, which is burning about five miles from the Texas line, was about 50% contained on Sunday night.
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Some much needed rainfall fell across parts of the state over the weekend, but state Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain says the state continues to battle more than 100 fires a day. Strain says lighting strikes are starting some of the fires.
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2023 has already yielded its fair share of major weather disasters. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has confirmed 15 weather disasters with total economic losses exceeding $1 billion each as of August 8.
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The Rice Leadership Development Program gives future leaders a comprehensive understanding of the rice industry, with an emphasis on personal development and communication skills.
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Louisiana has recorded an unprecedented amount of wildfires in August, forcing multiple southwestern towns to evacuate Thursday and state officials to implement a burn ban.
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It’s not often that Louisianans pray for rain in late August, when painful anniversaries of hurricanes pass and new systems threaten to repeat destruction. But as hundreds of wildfires engulfed tens of thousands of acres of land in the state, swallowing homes and forcing evacuations, some turned their heads skyward for a source of hope.
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Giving off major “Jurassic Park” vibes, a creature captured in Mississippi broke the record for the longest alligator ever captured in the state.
While its length — 14 feet, 3 inches — is astonishing, so too is its mass.
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It has been a hard year of extreme heat and drought for sugar cane farmers, which has affected crops and harvests.
"To say a field of sugarcane will not be harvested because of height has hardly ever been heard of even in drought years in the back. You have a loss but the fields were harvested, it's so bad right now," says Jim Domingues.
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On August 24, 2023, Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry’s (LDAF) forestry enforcement agents charged Ryan Miller of Independence with fire raising on the lands of another by criminal negligence and violation of the burn ban.
A fire on Hano Road, off Highway 16, was reported to 911 at approximately 3:49 p.m.
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Lauren Little pokes her head into the small office at the Beauregard Parish Arena that has become the de facto headquarters of the mission to rescue livestock from the ever-encroaching fires threatening Beauregard and Vernon parishes.
“We’ve got 70 heads of cattle, where do you want to put them?” Little, a 24-year-old college student from DeRidder asks her best friend and fellow volunteer, Marley Hazlett.
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Unpredictable winds, continued extreme heat and ultra-dry conditions fueled wildfires Saturday in western Louisiana, with officials ordering more residents to evacuate late into the evening.
“There’s nobody alive who’s seen conditions this dangerous,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said Saturday afternoon at the Vernon Parish Emergency Operations Center.
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The Tiger Island wildfire in Beauregard Parish, which has been burning for almost a week, has burned about 33,000 acres as of Sunday, according to a statement from parish officials.
"This is the largest fire ever recorded in Louisiana," Beauregard Parish Sheriff Mark Herford said in a Sunday news briefing.
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In the early morning hours of August 24, 2023, and throughout the day, multiple wildfires devastated the area near Union Hill in southwest Rapides Parish.
Investigators with the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry’s (LDAF) Forestry Enforcement Division were able to determine these wildfires were caused by arson.
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