The Man Planting Live Oaks to Save Louisiana’s Coastal Ridges

Bob and Dorothy Thibodeaux were married for more than 60 years, until Dorothy died last August. They raised eight children together; four more were lost during pregnancies, Thibodeaux, 83, recalls each time he talks of his family. Now widowed, he thinks about his late wife on the warm spring afternoons he spends sitting quietly on their home’s front porch, where an old live oak tree grows in front of it. He planted it in 1968, in the early years after he and Dorothy moved to Church Point, Louisiana.

The passion for trees isn’t just a hobby: Thibodeaux is an arborist. Part of his family-owned company is a 100-acre arboretum on their rural property in north Acadia Parish. He founded and managed Bob’s Tree Preservation in 1964, which consults and cultivates native live oak varieties, before leaving the business to two of his sons.

But Thibodeaux never retired from his passion for live oak preservation. His love for the trees began during childhood, when he would walk the parish’s bayous with his great-grandmother—"a devout Christian and naturalist," he says. He watched as she pulled up oak saplings that she would gift to friends and family during the holidays, or other special occasions.

"It’s the longest lasting gift you can give," Thibodeaux says—some live oaks can even live up to 2,000 years. Mandeville’s Seven Sisters oak is Louisiana’s largest; the tree is an estimated 600 to 1,500 years old. Its spread measures 132 feet; its trunk, 37 feet in diameter.

To live that long, however, live oaks must be durable enough to weather the Gulf of Mexico’s storms. Louisiana State University’s AgCenter describes live oaks as one of the region’s "most wind-resistant species," and it’s the oaks’ tolerance for hardship that has made it a regional symbol of resilience. According to locals, those who live near live oaks are typically tasked with their maintenance.

But like the many southwest Louisianans who have been uprooted by severe storms in recent years, the region’s live oaks have also shown they can endure only so much strain. Seasons ranging between months-long drought and 100-mile-per-hour hurricane winds take a toll on both.

Thibodeaux first noticed health declines in southwest Louisiana’s live oaks after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In the months after the storm, he founded the nonprofit Acorns of Hope with the aim of reforesting the state’s disappearing shoreline, where roughly 2,000 square miles of land has eroded into the sea in less than a century. The group’s reforestation work in turn helps preserve some of coastal Louisiana’s unique chenier plain, or coastal ridges that were built by tides over thousands of years; the live oaks’ roots help hold the vulnerable coastline together.

Still, the impact Thibodeaux and others can have is minimal compared to Louisiana’s ongoing coastal crisis. "I hope I’m wrong," he says of the region’s future. "But I see a lot of danger ahead."

Before Europeans began colonizing what is today part of the Gulf of Mexico’s eastern shoreline, the forestry officials estimate the Louisiana chenier live oak forest stretched some 100,000 acres. Today, only about five percent of the forest’s original footprint remains.

The live oak, or Quercus virginiana, is a slow-growing variety. And while its decline regionally predates Louisiana’s coastal erosion crisis, it’s among the symptoms of the region’s broader ecological collapse under the strains of climate change and oil and gas refining. In all, Louisiana’s land loss since 1932 totals roughly the size of Delaware. The state’s southwestern region has also seen some of the worst rates of coastal erosion in that span.

Louisiana’s Coastal Restoration and Protection Agency estimates that parts of southwest Louisiana experience an annual loss of 30 feet of shoreline. Rural Cameron Parish—located just southwest of Thibodeaux’s home in inland Acadia Parish—could lose nearly half of its existing land by 2050 without the CPRA’s invention through the state’s Coastal Master Plan, a 50-year, $50 billion coastal restoration and storm adaptation plan that state lawmakers update every four years. Up to 800 square miles of additional land loss could occur without the CPRA projects.

Coastal Louisiana parishes and neighboring inland parishes are in serious trouble, says Torbjörn Törnqvist, a geology professor at Tulane University in New Orleans who has studied the southwest Louisiana coast. "How long is it going to take?" Törnqvist asks, rhetorically, referring to the rate at which the region might not someday be livable. "That, of course, is always hard to predict, because part of it depends on what climate trajectory we'll be on through the rest of this century."

Southwest Louisiana and the state’s broader coast is at risk of losing more than just additional land. The live oaks that have historically grown from cheniers (in Cajun French, cheniers translates to a "place of the oaks") also play host to millions of migratory birds that use the area for rest during their seasonal journeys across the Americas. In fact, about 80 percent of all migratory birds that typically traverse the Gulf of Mexico will cross its western portion, which encompasses the southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana coasts, says Erik Johnson, the Audubon Society’s director of conservation.

Sea level rise and an uncharacteristically warm Gulf of Mexico, which accelerates a tropical storm’s development, have played roles in Louisiana’s coastal crisis and live oaks’ plight alike. However, it’s the toll of human activity that has exacerbated Louisiana’s coastal erosion most.

In southeast Louisiana’s Mississippi River Basin, a recent Nature Sustainability study estimates, the installation of levees, dams, and the dredging of transportation channels for oil and gas industry activity has led to a loss of roughly 1,700 acres annually. The confluence of negative impacts has redirected sediment patterns that help continue building land hosting vegetation, like live oaks or marshland. Once the Gulf of Mexico’s saltwater is introduced, freshwater marshlands begin to wither and die; regionally, as live oaks growing atop the cheniers disappear, so do the roots that helped hold the soil and shore together, exacerbating erosion.

There are efforts to counteract Louisiana’s coastal crisis that are underway. For instance, the CPRA has more than a hundred ongoing coastal restoration projects. Some, like the Southwest Coastal Project, in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, have been in the planning and funding process for nearly, if not more than, a decade. Most of the nearly $7 billion project will be invested in rebuilding shoreline and marshland areas locally.

In 2014, when the Corps and CPRA’s project was still in its earliest stages, a local who signed under the name E. Scott Henry was among hundreds to submit comments. He commended the Corps officials’ proposal altogether—particularly, the project’s goal to replant live oaks along the cheniers, writing that the "preservation of these magnificent trees has always been a responsibility and tradition of landowners ... They are almost sacred. Their protection has been passed down from one generation to the next, by example and dedication."

Bob Thibodeaux’s late wife Dorothy loved their southwest Louisiana property. So, not long after her death, to help keep her memory alive, he began building a garden. He hopes those who visit their property—where he also runs a small bed and breakfast—will feel a connection to her through the garden’s beauty.

Away from home, Thibodeaux’s Acorns of Hope has planted around 3,500 live oak saplings since they began their annual 300-mile cycle down the southwest Louisiana coast, according to his latest estimate. His work has earned him a series of accolades over the years, including the Distinguished Service Award by the Louisiana Nursery and Landscape Association for his long-time contributions to the state’s arboricultural industry. Most of the live oaks his family company has produced come from the South’s most famous trees of the variety, including the Seven Sisters oak in Mandeville. Thibodeaux sought out the mighty live oaks’ acorns for their genetic superiority; if pruned correctly and cultivated outside, he believes enough live oaks can help spare their region from the winds of powerful storms that have yet to make landfall along the coastline. "People need to understand how important the live oak is," he says.

Record drought last summer did not help their cause. In some cases, he witnessed the loss of as much as 80 percent of a live oaks’ root system resulting from drought. It’s discouraging—but not enough to dim his goal. 

"I’ve been here a long time," Thibodeaux says. "I had back surgery, I had prostate cancer surgery. But I’m still planting trees. That counts for something. And I’m planning on planting trees until God calls me." 

Top Image of white egrets on a live oak tree in Bayou Grand Caillou in Dulac, Louisiana by Philip Gould/Getty Images.

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