A 45-minute boat ride from Louisiana's coast lies a small island.
The island's small size is in contrast with a huge role it plays in supporting some of the
coast's most iconic wildlife. Coastal Louisiana is one of the most important
states in the country for colonial nesting water birds. Bretton island is no different.
Breton Island is one of our long-term persistent brown pelican colonies here in the Gulf of Mexico.
Actually one of the largest we have, and it is recognized as a globally important bird area
because it hosts thousands, if not over a hundred thousand,
nesting birds. Brown Pelicans, Black S kimmers, multitude of turns, and also gulls. It also
provides critical wintering habitat for birds to nest in the Upper Midwest, like the piping plover.
Breton National Wildlife Refuge was founded in 1904 by president Theodore Roosevelt.
And President Theodore Roosevelt created the Breton National Wildlife Refuge,
recognizing the devastation that hunters were having on our wild bird populations.
It was popular in women's fashion to use the plumes from birds. Hunters were traveling to
islands like Breton, and they were collecting feathers and entire adults, leaving their eggs
and their nestlings exposed to the elements, and caused the populations to begin to crash.
Breton Island is a unique and special place in the Gulf of Mexico. For about the last 2000 years
has been eroding as part of an old Mississippi River delta system. If we don't do anything,
we expect it to submerge into a sand shoal. Like much of the islands around it
Breton is extremely important to hundreds of thousands of nesting birds every year,
and if that island's not there then these birds have nowhere to go. The Deepwater
Horizon oil spill was about 18 miles off the coast of Southeast Louisiana. The injury was to
wetland vegetation birds, marine mammals, sea turtles, and the light.
The Deepwater Horizon incident did have a tremendous impact on bird populations
across the Louisiana Coast, Breton being one of those nesting islands that was impacted.
With Audubon Louisiana, we're really pleased, one that the BP oil spill funding is actually
already hitting the ground. We are also very pleased to see the natural resource trustees,
the restore council, state agencies working to disseminate these funds,
and is having impact and actually being allocated towards these restoration projects that are so
essential to protecting our wild bird populations. This Breton restoration project we're going
to provide additional habitat for nesting populations. So, I actually grew up hunting and
fishing in this area. It was difficult to see what was happening, not only to to our refuge habitats,
but also the fishing industry. It was a detriment to the to the fishermen in this local area.
We have over half a billion tons of goods that are shipped down the Lower Mississippi River from
New Orleans each year. New Orleans and a lot of the cities in Coastal Louisiana depend on levee
systems, and those levee systems are protected by wetlands and a lot of those wetlands are protected
by barrier islands such as Breton island. As these wetlands are degraded, so are those resources,
but as we restore them, we also restore those resources. Having that entire ecosystem in good
healthy shape is vitally important, not just to Louisiana, not just to the Brown Pelican,
but also to the people the entire country.