Conservation Organizations Thank Secretary Jewell for Visiting Gulf Coast

(New Orleans, LA – June 21, 2016) This week, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell is visiting Louisiana to highlight the Department’s restoration projects selected for funding last year by the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council (Council) prior to the BP settlement.

Leading national and local conservation organizations working on Mississippi River Delta and Gulf Coast restoration – Environmental Defense Fund, National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana and Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation – supported these projects and released the following statement:

“We are grateful that Secretary Jewell is here this week to spotlight the region and these important restoration projects. Secretary Jewell now has an opportunity and responsibility to drive large-scale restoration that we need across the Gulf Coast. With real money becoming available through the BP oil spill settlement, Secretary Jewell, along with other agency and state leaders, has a specific window to move forward the Council’s commitment to large-scale projects that will set the Gulf Coast on a long-term path to a sustainable future.

“In particular, Louisiana’s land loss crisis – and the effort to stop and reverse it – falls within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction given the resources it’s tasked with protecting. We appreciate the Secretary’s personal investment in getting restoration projects started on the ground and need her continued leadership and commitment in Louisiana and across the Gulf Coast.”

The Department of Interior (DOI) manages three parks or refuges in the lower Mississippi River Delta, one each in the Breton Basin, the active Bird’s Foot Delta, and the Barataria Basin, as well as several other refuges in the Pontchartrain Basin, Terrebonne Basin, the Atchafalaya Basin, and the Chenier Plain. These provide some of the continent’s most important habitat for DOI Trust Resources, including alligators, alligator snapping turtles, diamond-back terrapins, marsh birds, wintering waterfowl, colonial nesting water birds, migratory stopover habitat for neotropical migrants, and prime habitat for mink, muskrat, otter and Louisiana black bears. All are likely to experience profound effects from continued land loss and subsidence, and without land-building restoration measures are potentially doomed by future sea level rise.