Problems at lacassine refuge??

[Top Dawg]

Sounds easy but lacassine would be a lot harder to burn than say Sabine. They are two totally different marshes. Sabine has ground and if you light it afire it will burn all the way to the root system. Lacassine is no ground. The grass is over head high everywhere but the water is also knee high just about everywhere. It would be hard to keep a fire going in lacassine. No to mention its mostly cat tails and I haven't talked to anyone that's found a good way to get rid of them yet. I agree something needs to be done but it would be harder in lacassine. Hell Sabine usually has a lightning fire or two every year. And budget has a lot to do with it. I have called refuge officials several times on this issue and the answer is always "no funding". They don't even have the funding to man what they have now. Which is why there is still porches and washing machines in Sabine and will likely be there until they rot. Only thing that might open up lacassine again is another Rita. And I don't think anyone wants that.

[Spunt Drag]

Originally Posted by Top Dawg

Sounds easy but lacassine would be a lot harder to burn than say Sabine. They are two totally different marshes. Sabine has ground and if you light it afire it will burn all the way to the root system. Lacassine is no ground. The grass is over head high everywhere but the water is also knee high just about everywhere. It would be hard to keep a fire going in lacassine. No to mention its mostly cat tails and I haven't talked to anyone that's found a good way to get rid of them yet. I agree something needs to be done but it would be harder in lacassine. Hell Sabine usually has a lightning fire or two every year. And budget has a lot to do with it. I have called refuge officials several times on this issue and the answer is always "no funding". They don't even have the funding to man what they have now. Which is why there is still porches and washing machines in Sabine and will likely be there until they rot. Only thing that might open up lacassine again is another Rita. And I don't think anyone wants that.

Yes the saltwater intrusion opened lacassine up big time. Unfortunately it brought mass destruction with it. If you burned at the end of the season, it would be even thicker by opening day. Sabine can't be self sufficient because of the weir system, not sure about lacassine. Only thing that may help is to install pumps and keep the hunting area flooded with water. I think the drought the past couple of year really choked that place up wit vegetation. But when you talkin pumps, you talkin $$$$$$$! BTW I'm not arguing with anybody, and I don't think I have the answer. It's just an opinion, and I like where this thread is going, if anyone else has a suggestion, lets hear it.

[Duck Butter]

I deal with the effects from lack of fire quite often. Fire is what created much of the landscape in that area whether its marsh, prairie, or longleaf pine and when you take that out its like taking a turtle or a crawfish out of water, yeah it will survive but it will not thrive. Fire helps to keep woody brush under control and after a few years of not burning, fire is not as effective. If the marsh in Lacassine was burned right now it would do very little, it would just come back up green in a few weeks. You then need to get it back to where it was previously which is where herbicides come into play. It is so much easier to maintain an area than it is to restore an area. Restoration is expensive, the costs of herbicides and the manpower to implement them is expensive, and when the vegetation is very thick, it takes two or even three herbicide jobs to get to it all. You have to let the veg die back and then spray what you missed or what the herbicide could not get down into. On paper, it is very simple to restore something, you go in and do A, B, C, and D and then just maintain after that, but the time scale between A to the maintenance stage may be 5 or even 10 years.
All our NWRs and WMAs could use some funding, but I don't see that happening in this economy unless we do like Missouri and add a little sales tax statewide to go towards conservation on our state lands, but asking Louisiana people to raise taxes. Seems like 'stimulus' funds could have been used for the SW La refuges complex back in 2009 but that is a totally different subject