Bayou-Diversity

Bayou-Diversity - Cover

Nature and People in the Louisiana Bayou Country

by Kelby Ouchley

264 pages / 5.50 x 8.00 inches / 22 b&w illustrations, 1 map

ebook available

Science / Environmental History

Hardcover / 9780807138595 / October 2011

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. In Bayou-Diversity, conservationist Kelby Ouchley reveals the bayou’s intricate web of flora and fauna.

Through a collection of essays about Louisiana’s natural history, Ouchley details an amazing array of plants and animals found in the Bayou State. Baldcypress, orchids, feral hogs, eels, black bears, bald eagles, and cottonmouth snakes live in the well over four hundred bayous of the region. Collectively, Ouchley’s vignettes portray vibrant and complex habitats. But human interaction with the bayou and our role in its survival, Ouchley argues, will determine the future of these intricate ecosystems. 
 
Bayou-Diversity narrates the story of the bayou one flower, one creature at a time, in turn illustrating the bigger picture of this treasured and troubled Louisiana landscape.

Kelby Ouchley is a former US Fish & Wildlife Service biologist. He is the author of several books concerning natural history, including Bayou-Diversity: Nature and People in the Louisiana Bayou Country.

Advance Praise for Bayou-Diversity

“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.”—Phillip Hoose, National Book Award-winning author of The Race to Save the Lord God Bird

Bayou Diversity Podcasts

SOURCE: Soundcloud

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