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Why is Victoria concerned about marshes?
Victoria (right) surveys an area that is losing
land within the Mississippi River Delta in Louisiana.
Growing up in coastal Louisiana, every summer my family would go visit my mother’s homeplace in La Fourche Parish. We would surf fish off the barrier island Grand Isle. The beach there, this wisp of an island, is not like Myrtle Beach or the Jersey Shore. It’s local. It’s a bit rough around the edges. It smells of saltwater and dead fish. And yet, it was our island. Every year we visited, we had to search for the beach—it always seemed to show up in a new place. One year it was behind a thick hedge of tall grasses. Another year, it was hiding below concrete bricks shaped like an amphitheater. Another year, Christmas trees formed the barrier reef.
Eventually, I learned these were efforts to fight erosion, the washing away of the beach. However, I didn’t understand the larger problem that all those marshes we drove over to get to the beach were suffering and withering away as well. From heel to toe, the boot of Louisiana is subsiding, and the levees along the Mississippi River have a lot to do with that situation.
Louisiana has lost more than 2,000 square miles of land—nearly the size of the state of Delaware—in the Mississippi River Delta and along its coast. Football fields of marshland are vanishing at a rate of one every 100 minutes. The devastation of this vital natural infrastructure for a coastal region is brought on by a variety of factors including: levees preventing sediment distribution, upriver dams holding back that sediment, and invasive species disrupting natural habitats. These and other man-made interventions on the Delta and its connected coastline are having huge consequences for people, land, water, and wildlife that depend on it.
Victoria Bradford Strybicki is the founder and artistic director at A House Unbuilt, which is a member organization of the Mississippi River Network. Her work includes telling stories of people along the Mississippi River. She explains, "We are not unbuilding houses, per se. Through deep listening practices, storytelling, and dance we unbuild the architecture that houses our everyday lives."
When you give to the Mississippi River Network you are helping us implement solutions that help communities from New Orleans up to the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Minnesota. We work with River Citizens and member organizations, like Victoria and A House Unbuilt, to help protect and restore vital River ecosystems including wetlands and marshes.
Will you help us reach our Earth Month (April) goal of $2,500 to help the wellbeing of the people, land, water, and wildlife of the River?
Levees and other man-made interventions
have huge consequences for people, land,
water, and wildlife that depend on the River.
The Mississippi River Network (MRN) is fiscally sponsored by the Center for Rural Affairs. MRN is a 501(c)(3) non profit organization, and all donations are tax deductible to the full extent of the law. If you would like to send a check please make it out to MRN and mail to:
Mississippi River Network, P.O. Box 1463 La Grange Park, IL 60526
Email info@1mississippi.org with questions.
We appreciate your generous support.
Your gift will be put to work immediately to create a healthy Mississippi River for people, land, wildlife, and water.