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Louisiana Coastline Vanishing: Indigenous Tribes Fight Back
6 Dec
Summary
- Indigenous communities in Louisiana are battling coastal erosion and adapting to climate change.
- Recycled oyster shell reefs are being built to slow land loss and protect shorelines.
- Homes are being fortified with hurricane straps and elevated to withstand extreme weather.
The delicate coastline of Louisiana is steadily retreating, threatening the ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples like the Pointe-au-Chien Tribe. These communities are actively working to preserve what remains and adapt to their changing environment. Efforts include constructing makeshift reefs from recycled oyster shells to combat erosion and fortifying homes and buildings to withstand increasingly severe storms.
Multiple factors contribute to this land loss, including severed natural river flows starving wetlands of sediment, saltwater intrusion killing vegetation, groundwater pumping causing land subsidence, and rising sea levels fueled by climate change. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost approximately 2,000 square miles of land, with erosion rates alarmingly high.
