The Animals Of Louisiana

Section 01

A State That Is Disappearing

Louisiana holds roughly 40 percent of the coastal wetlands in the continental United States, and it is losing them faster than anywhere else in the country. Since the 1930s the state has lost something on the order of 2,000 square miles of land to open water. At the worst of it, Louisiana was losing a football field of marsh roughly every hour.

The cause is a river that no longer builds. For thousands of years the Mississippi flooded each spring, spilling sediment across its delta and adding land faster than the Gulf could take it away. Levees built for flood control and navigation now send that sediment straight off the continental shelf. Meanwhile canals dredged for oil and gas let saltwater into freshwater marsh, killing the plants that hold the soil together, and the delta continues to sink under its own weight.

For wildlife this matters enormously, because those marshes are not marginal habitat. They are the wintering ground for a large share of the Mississippi Flyway's waterfowl, the nursery for most of the Gulf's commercially important fish and shellfish, and the only home of specialised marsh animals. When Louisiana loses marsh, the continent loses duck habitat.

Above the coast the state is more varied than its reputation suggests. The Atchafalaya Basin is the largest river swamp in North America, roughly a million acres of cypress and tupelo. Northwest Louisiana has upland pine and hardwood. And the state's alligator programme is one of the most cited conservation and commercial successes in American wildlife management.

Section 02

Louisiana's Official State Animals

The Louisiana black bear is the other recovery. A distinct subspecies of the American black bear with a narrower, longer skull, it fell to perhaps a few hundred animals in isolated bottomland patches and was federally listed as threatened in 1992, the same year it became the state mammal. Habitat corridor work and translocation lifted it enough for delisting in 2016.

Section 03

Habitats By Region, And Who Lives In Each

1. Coastal marsh and barrier islands

A gradient from fresh to brackish to saline marsh behind eroding barrier islands. This is the wildlife heart of the state: mottled duck, which unlike most ducks lives on the Gulf coast year-round, plus clapper and king rails, seaside sparrow, black rail, roseate spoonbill, reddish egret, and brown pelican colonies on islands like Queen Bess and Raccoon Island. American alligators occur throughout, and diamondback terrapin in the brackish zone.

2. Atchafalaya Basin and cypress swamp

The largest river swamp in North America. Bald cypress and water tupelo standing in slow water, with crawfish, catfish, and gar below and wading birds above. Louisiana black bear, river otter, bobcat, swamp rabbit, and cottonmouth all live here, along with prothonotary warblers nesting in tree cavities over water and one of the densest breeding populations of that species anywhere.

3. Mississippi alluvial plain and bottomland hardwood

Once a nearly continuous forest of overcup oak, sweetgum, and bitter pecan across the northeast, now largely cleared for row crop with remnants in wildlife refuges. Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge is the core of Louisiana black bear range and the last place the ivory-billed woodpecker was reliably documented in the 1930s and 1940s.

4. Northern and western uplands

Longleaf and loblolly pine, upland hardwood, and the Kisatchie National Forest. This is where Louisiana's red-cockaded woodpeckers live in fire-managed pine, alongside timber rattlesnake, Louisiana pine snake (one of the rarest snakes in North America), gopher tortoise at the extreme western edge of its range, and copperhead.

5. Gulf waters and offshore

The Gulf of Mexico shelf, with thousands of oil platforms acting as artificial reefs. Bottlenose dolphins are resident in the bays and nearshore. Five sea turtle species use these waters, and Kemp's ridley, the world's most endangered sea turtle, feeds here. Manatees occasionally wander west from Florida.

Section 04

The Alligator Programme

Louisiana's alligator management is worth its own section because it is one of the most frequently cited examples of conservation funded by commercial use.

By the early 1960s unregulated hide hunting had reduced Louisiana's alligator population so severely that the state closed the season entirely in 1962. The American alligator was listed as endangered in 1967. Populations recovered quickly once killing stopped, and Louisiana reopened a tightly controlled season in 1972.

The system that developed has three parts. Wild harvest is limited by tags issued according to habitat acreage, so landowners have a direct financial interest in keeping marsh intact. Egg collection allows licensed operators to take eggs from the wild for captive rearing, on condition that a set percentage of the resulting young alligators is released back into the marsh at a size where survival is far higher than in the wild. And nuisance alligator removal handles animals in populated areas.

The result is roughly two million wild alligators in Louisiana today, plus large numbers on farms. The species was federally delisted in 1987, though it remains listed as threatened by similarity of appearance so that crocodilian skins can still be regulated in trade.

Section 05

Mammals Of Louisiana

• Louisiana black bear: the state mammal, delisted in 2016 after recovery from a few hundred animals. Concentrated in the Tensas, Atchafalaya, and upper Atchafalaya basins.
• White-tailed deer: abundant statewide, including a small-bodied form in the coastal marsh.
• Bobcat, coyote, gray and red fox, river otter, mink, beaver, raccoon, opossum, striped skunk, armadillo, swamp rabbit, marsh rabbit: all widespread. Swamp rabbits swim readily and are hunted with dogs in the bottomlands.
• Nutria: the defining invasive mammal, covered in the invasive species section.
• Bats: 12 species, including the Rafinesque's big-eared bat, which roosts in hollow cypress and tupelo trees, making it dependent on old swamp timber. See where bats live.
• Marine mammals: bottlenose dolphin resident in bays and sounds, plus sperm whales in the deep Gulf and the critically endangered Rice's whale, of which perhaps 50 remain worldwide, in the northern Gulf.

Gone: red wolf, which was native to Louisiana and whose last wild strongholds were in southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas before the species was taken into captivity in the 1970s; also the Florida panther population that once extended here, plus bison and elk in the prairies of the southwest.

Section 06

Birds Of Louisiana

Around 475 species have been recorded, one of the highest state totals in the country, driven by the Mississippi Flyway and the trans-Gulf migration.

• Waterfowl: coastal marsh and rice fields winter enormous numbers of gadwall, green-winged teal, northern pintail, lesser scaup, snow geese, and white-fronted geese. Louisiana is among the most important wintering states on the continent.
• Wading birds: roseate spoonbill, reddish egret, tricolored heron, white and glossy ibis, wood stork, and mixed rookeries in the coastal zone.
• Trans-Gulf migration: warblers, tanagers, buntings, orioles, and thrushes cross 500 or more miles of open Gulf in a single flight. When they hit a headwind, they drop into the first cover they reach, and the cheniers, ancient beach ridges with live oak groves, become full of exhausted migrants. Peveto Woods and Grand Isle are the classic sites.
• Whooping crane: Louisiana's non-migratory flock was extirpated by 1950, and reintroduction began in 2011 at White Lake. The flock now numbers several dozen birds and has produced wild-hatched chicks.
• Others: brown pelican (the state bird), bald eagle nesting in cypress, swallow-tailed kite, Mississippi kite, red-cockaded woodpecker in pine, and seaside and Nelson's sparrows in marsh.

Section 07

Reptiles, Amphibians, And Fish

Louisiana has around 60 reptile and 55 amphibian species, plus a very rich freshwater fish fauna.

Snakes: about 40 species, seven venomous: copperhead, cottonmouth, eastern diamondback rattlesnake, timber or canebrake rattlesnake, pygmy rattlesnake, Texas coral snake, and the eastern coral snake in the far east. The Louisiana pine snake, non-venomous and among the rarest snakes in North America, depends on longleaf pine and pocket gopher burrows and is federally threatened.

Turtles: alligator snapping turtle, which can exceed 150 pounds, plus Louisiana's endemic-adjacent map turtles, gopher tortoise in the west, diamondback terrapin in brackish marsh, and five sea turtle species offshore.

Amphibians: green treefrog (the state amphibian), plus three-toed amphiuma, greater and lesser sirens, dwarf salamander, gopher frog, and the Louisiana slimy salamander. Cypress swamps produce some of the loudest frog choruses in North America.

Fish and crustaceans: roughly 160 freshwater fish species, including alligator gar reaching eight feet, paddlefish, and the pallid sturgeon, which is federally endangered. Red swamp crawfish is the state crustacean and the basis of a major aquaculture industry. Blue crab, brown and white shrimp, and oysters make Louisiana one of the largest seafood producers in the country, and all of them depend on marsh nursery habitat.

Section 08

Invasive Species

• Nutria: a South American rodent brought to Louisiana in the 1930s for fur. When the fur market collapsed, the population exploded, and nutria eat the roots and rhizomes of marsh plants rather than just the leaves, which kills the plant and turns marsh into open water. Louisiana runs a bounty programme paying per tail, removing hundreds of thousands of animals a year. Background: nutria rats.
• Feral hogs: extremely abundant, rooting up marsh and levees and eating alligator and turtle eggs and ground nests.
• Apple snails: island apple snails now damage rice agriculture and wetland vegetation.
• Asian carp: silver and bighead carp established in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya systems.
• Lionfish: established on Gulf reefs and oil platform structures, eating juvenile reef fish.
• Red imported fire ant: arrived through Mobile and now ubiquitous, and a significant predator of ground-nesting birds and reptile hatchlings.

Section 09

Dangerous Animals In Louisiana

• American alligator: roughly two million in the state, and serious attacks remain rare. Never feed them, keep dogs from the water's edge, and do not swim in fresh water at dawn or dusk.
• Venomous snakes: seven species. Cottonmouths are the most commonly encountered near water and will hold their ground. Copperheads cause most bites.
• Fire ants and Africanized bees: stinging insects cause the most animal-related deaths through allergic reaction.
• Mosquitoes: West Nile virus and eastern equine encephalitis are both present, and Louisiana's mosquito load is among the heaviest in the country.
• Sharks, stingrays, and jellyfish: bull sharks enter brackish and even fresh water in Louisiana rivers. Stingray injuries are common in shallow Gulf water.
• Feral hogs: aggressive when cornered and a genuine risk in swamp and marsh.
• Heat, water, and weather: worth naming, since drowning, heat illness, and storms harm far more people than Louisiana wildlife.

Section 10

Endangered And Protected Species

Louisiana has two of the country's clearest delisting successes in the brown pelican and the Louisiana black bear, and simultaneously the most severe habitat loss problem of any state. Coastal land loss, saltwater intrusion, subsidence, sea level rise, and hurricane damage to eroding barrier islands all continue. The state's Coastal Master Plan proposes sediment diversions to let the river build land again, which would help marsh but change salinity in ways that affect oyster and dolphin populations, making it one of the harder conservation trade-offs in the country.

Section 11

Where To See Wildlife In Louisiana

• Atchafalaya Basin: cypress swamp by boat, with alligators, wading birds, and prothonotary warblers.
• Sabine and Lacassine National Wildlife Refuges: coastal marsh with alligators, mottled ducks, and vast wintering waterfowl.
• Peveto Woods and Grand Isle: the classic trans-Gulf migrant fallout sites in April.
• Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge: bottomland hardwood and Louisiana black bear.
• Kisatchie National Forest: longleaf pine, red-cockaded woodpecker, and Louisiana pine snake habitat.
• Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, Barataria Preserve: accessible swamp boardwalks near New Orleans.
• Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge: coastal marsh research area with excellent alligator and waterbird viewing.