Bayou-diversity ― Nature and People in the Louisiana Bayou Country

Louisiana’s bayous and their watersheds teem with cypress trees, alligators, crawfish, and many other life forms. From Bayou Tigre to Half Moon Bayou, these sluggish streams meander through lowlands, marshes, and even uplands to dominate the state’s landscape. Following the 2011 title, Bayou-Diversity, conservationist Kelby Ouchley continues his journey through the vast ecosystems of Louisiana with a new array of historical and cultural narratives, personal anecdotes, and reflections.

Ouchley details the plants and animals found in the Bayou State, including the baldcypress, orchids, feral hogs, eels, black bears, bald eagles, and cottonmouth snakes that inhabit the four hundred plus bayous of the region. Collectively, Ouchley’s vignettes portray vibrant and complex habitats that are at the mercy of human intervention in the form of sustainable policies in order to survive. He narrates the story of the bayous one flower, one creature at a time, in turn illustrating the bigger picture of this treasured and troubled Louisiana landscape.

In his praise for the 2011 book, Phillip Hoose, National Book Award-winning author of The Race to Save the Lord God Bird, proclaimed: “Kelby Ouchley has given us an unforgettable collection of essays on the natural history of Louisiana. Nothing escapes his attention: ticks, lightning, stray cats, oil spills, sluggish water, snakebite myths and remedies, the origin of his great-grandmother’s rocking chair. At the heart is an acute understanding of Louisiana ecology—how it works and should work. The essays are beautifully written: thermal wind currents are ‘bubbles of air that serve as elevators for raptors.’ In five paragraphs, Ouchley completely changed my understanding of teeth. I haven’t enjoyed or learned so much about the natural history of a place since I read Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac.”