Louisiana is called the Pelican State, and now its officials are designing two projects to shore up coastal islands with an eye to improving nesting grounds for the namesake bird. Louisiana got more than $148 million following 2010’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill to improve coastal rookeries. The projects would aid Rabbit Island in southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish and fill an area around Queen Bess Island in Barataria Bay that’s turned to open water.

The Queen Bess site has particular significance for the brown pelican, Louisiana’s state bird. It’s where scientists released young pelicans in 1968 to restore the population after it was devastated by the insecticide DDT.  The insecticide caused pelicans and other large birds to lay eggs with thin shells, meaning the parents would smash the eggs long before chicks would hatch.  At the time, scientists didn’t know much about how to reintroduce birds, so they chose chicks between 8 and 12 weeks old – strong enough to make the trip but too young to have their flight feathers yet. Scientists would bring the birds fish twice a day until they were old enough to fly, biologist Todd Baker said.  Three years later, in 1971, the birds released on Queen Bess Island returned to lay 11 nests – the first in a decade. The U.S. banned DDT the following year.

All told, Louisiana relocated 767 pelican chicks through 1976, and the population continued to grow such that the birds were removed from the endangered species list in 2009. But officials now say pelicans are steadily losing Louisiana nesting sites. Some leave for Texas. Those that stay in Louisiana often must make do with less ideal nesting grounds, like coastal habitats where the ridges aren’t as high, Baker said.  The oil spill also damaged the population. State officials don’t have an exact number, but about a quarter of the dead birds collected from the disaster were pelicans. About 1,000 birds of all types were killed just on Queen Bess Island, where many pelicans nest, Baker said.

The rebuilding is a balancing act for scientists, who must rebuild enough land to expand the nesting grounds without making the island so large and high that predators move in, Baker said. The birds seek to avoid predators by laying their eggs on islands.  “As many drive along Louisiana’s coastal region and see the pelican flying above, it is easy to take for granted their great abundance,” Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Jack Montoucet wrote in a statement. “The job now is to make certain the species continues to flourish.”

Louisiana seems to have made conservation of wildlife a priority over the last decade.  In the heart of Cajun country, a wilderness preservation group and an oil company are trying to strike a balance between conservation and commerce. That is the goal of the Cypress Island Preserve, one of the nation’s largest and most important wading-bird rookeries and the site of a handful of oil and gas wells, three miles from Breaux Bridge on the western edge of the Atchafalaya Basin in southwestern Louisiana.

The rookery took root in ancient wetlands that exist today mostly because Texaco held on to the parcel for nearly a century. Much of the land has been deeded to the Nature Conservancy of Louisiana, with the latest donation in March.

The bird colony, which roosts in the preserve’s Lake Martin, is being closely watched. Since wading birds are at the top of the food chain, said Dr. Bruce Fleury, a visiting instructor in ecology and evolutionary biology at Tulane University, the birds ”are the canary in the coal mine for the wetland habitat.”

The viability of the rookery and its hardwood ecosystem will depend on how well the birds and other wildlife fare with oil and gas wells for neighbors, with the commotion of growing numbers of tourists, with stagnating water and with the anger of neighboring farmers who say the birds look at their crawfish ponds as all-you-can-eat buffets.

The habitat of Cypress Island — not a natural island, but named for its stand of cypress — has mostly thrived. Starting in the 1970’s, bird populations there boomed with the rise in nearby crawfish farming, Dr. Fleury said. The rookery appears to have held an average of 15,000 birds since 1996, said Dr. Thomas Michot, a wildlife biologist with the National Wetlands Research Center, part of the federal Interior Department. Researchers suspect that the number may have dropped recently and will begin a new count in August.

Preserving Cypress Island is crucial to stemming the decline of the Lower Mississippi Valley ecosystem, said Dr. Keith Ouchley, executive director of the state’s Nature Conservancy. Cypress Island is ”one of the last remaining large blocks of hardwood forest” in an area from southern Illinois to the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Dr. Ouchley said.

On a recent visit, 10,000 to 20,000 or so little blue herons, great blue herons, cattle egrets, snowy egrets, tricolored herons, black-crowned night herons and yellow-crowned night herons filled spindly buttonbush branches, just yards from the preserve’s heavily traveled road. They were joined by 100 or so pairs of gaudily pink roseate spoonbills. Great egrets nested above the fray in stout tupelo cypress boughs.

The lake area supports other wildlife, including 1,800 to 2,000 alligators that float at the edges of the roosts, ready to snap up wayward hatchlings. Migratory songbirds nest in the spring and refuel in the fall in the dense woods, Dr. Ouchley said. Two hundred species have been identified, including warblers, vireos, flycatchers, gnatcatchers, grosbeaks and buntings.

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