Thoughts on Flyway Federation of Louisiana?

Oh jesus h christ....

If one can't admit that changing land use practices in LA(rise in crawfish ponds and conversion to cane and cattle), increasingly degraded habitat in coastal la, increased motorized and non motorized human activity in coastal LA(30 years ago nobody was fishing, kayaking or bowfishing shallow coastal LA 7 days a week. are part of the problem you have no credibility. Also... NO till farming is and has been a game changer with the above mentioned. flooded ag fields up north don't have the holding power no till has created... LA needs to address it's issues first...

I am a founding member. What would you like to know?

Great job of identifying issues! Only thing I would add is the degradation of the marsh. So many people want to put our declining numbers on one issue....

Thanks be to Dr. Goins I'm seeing more ducks this year since 1999.

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one can't admit that changing land use practices in LA(rise in crawfish ponds and conversion to cane and cattle),

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I have to dispel one myth here, sugarcane acres have not substantially increased in Louisiana. You are starting to see a shift of acreage from the Lafayette and river parish areas to the more central LA region due to increased residential and industrial development pressures.
Total harvestable acres of sugarcane have hovered around the 400K mark for quite some time.
Cane acres in Louisiana have little to do with over all shifts in migration patterns.

Additionally, you are seeing more cattle acres going into CRP mitigation banks than before.


Now my subjective rant...
Nonetheless, you have changing farming practices along the Miss. River and in the north (Arkansas) that keep more birds up north. A lot of farmers make much more per acre on duck leases than actual grain incomes right now and they are trying to encourage good hunting habitat.

You also have the complete degradation of the LA coastline and it’s saltwater marshs. The environments have changed and the birds migration patterns have changed too.

Supposedly there are more birds than ever but they just aren’t making their way down here.

I'll add lock's and damns and CRP/WRP.

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With regard to sugarcane acreage, it’s not so much the overall acres per se as much as where the acres are now. We have TONS of cane around, what was all historically rice. Used to have zero.

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Here in lies da truth part 3

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With regard to sugarcane acreage, it’s not so much the overall acres per se as much as where the acres are now. We have TONS of cane around, what was all historically rice. Used to have zero.

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There is probably 10 times more rice acreage that has gone to grass/green rice crawfish ponds or just grown up in trees than sugarcane

There maybe 15k max of former rice acreage that has been converted to cane and there was 600k acres of rice planted in 1999 and 430k this past year
Biggest decline is in Vermilion parish