Holiday ornament celebrates Louisiana black bear
For 15 years, the Louisiana Capitol Foundation has raised money for preservation of the State Capitol and its historic furnishings by selling commemorative Christmas ornaments. Past ornaments have featured the Capitol building itself, its Art Deco door hardware and the Super Bowl-winning New Orleans Saints.
The ornaments are popular holiday gifts among the many people who have worked at the Capitol.
For its 16th annual ornament, the Capitol Foundation is featuring the Louisiana black bear. The design is the artwork used on the “Save the Louisiana Black Bear” license plate sold by the state Office of Motor Vehicles.
The bear is special to me because it was my legislation as a state senator in 1995 that created the Black Bear plate. Today, several thousand Louisiana motorists support black bear conservation by voluntarily paying a surcharge on their license fees to carry the plate on their vehicles. The money goes into a fund that helps preserve habitat for the bear.
The Louisiana Black Bear is a subspecies of the American black bear. In the mid-1990s, it was estimated that no more than 300 of the bears roamed the remaining hardwood bottomlands of Northeast, Central and South Louisiana and surrounding regions of Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas. As a result, the bear was declared a threatened species by the federal government.
Today, an estimated 500 bears can be found in Louisiana alone, thanks in part to the license-plate sales and also the work of dedicated wildlife enthusiasts in public and private life.
The Christmas ornament costs $15. You can get it by contacting Brenda Wright at the Louisiana House of Representatives, 225-342- 6945, or [email protected]. “Save the Louisiana Black Bear” license plates are available from the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles. The OMV website is www.expresslane.org. More lawsuits filed against oil industry The effort to hold major oil and gas companies accountable for their role in eroding Louisiana’s coast is expanding, despite efforts by Gov. Bobby Jindal to shield the industry and make taxpayers alone carry this enormous burden.
Meanwhile, a new federal report said the loss of wetlands in the Gulf of Mexico more than doubled between 2004 and 2009 when compared to an earlier five-year period, suggesting coastal land loss is getting worse.
Last month the parishes of Jefferson and Plaquemines filed suit in state courts demanding that dozens of oil, gas and pipeline companies repair damage to their coastal wetlands from dredging canals, dumping waste materials and other operations.
The lawsuits spring from the parishes’ authority under state law to regulate coastal zones within their borders. The parishes contend that canals dug in the marsh and other oil-related activities have damaged the wetlands and increased their risk of storm damage.
The firms named in the parish lawsuits include some of the same 97 oilfield companies sued this summer by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority East. That is the New Orleans-based levee board whose landmark lawsuit against the oil industry over coastal erosion has created a stir throughout the state.
For decades coastal scientists have documented damage to Louisiana’s marsh from oil-industry activities. Companies including ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and others have collectively dredged 10,000 miles of canals and pipelines through the marsh, letting saltwater intrude and kill the plants that hold the land together.
Powerful defenders of the oil industry, including Jindal and most of the state’s politicians, blame coastal erosion on the federal government for controlling the Mississippi River and preventing its historic flooding of the Louisiana wetlands, which built the delta over millions of years. Coastal advocates making this argument, supported by oil industry donations, have lobbied Congress to force taxpayers to fund state restoration plans.
Virtually no prominent elected official in modern-day Louisiana has dared to test Big Oil’s power over issues like pollution or taxation. The most notable exception, Gov. Dave Treen, won the governorship in 1979 with help from the industry but lost it in 1983 after advocating a tax on imported oil to address this same issue – damage to the wetlands from oil exploration and development.
Treen’s Republican successor, Jindal, opposes holding Big Oil accountable for coastal erosion. He has replaced the chief supporter of the Southeast Flood Authority lawsuit, prize-winning New Orleans author John Barry, with an oil-industry lawyer who is now trying to undo the suit.
Unfortunately for Jindal, the replacement board member may have a conflict of interest if his law firm represents the same oil and pipeline companies named in the lawsuit.
For his part, Barry has formed a nonprofit organization called “Restore Louisiana Now” to support the lawsuit. The group will advocate “the most basic American values,” Barry said. “Keep your word, obey the law and take responsibility for your actions.”
Foster Campbell is the North Louisiana representative on the Louisiana Public Service Commission. You can reach him at 676-7464 or foster. [email protected].
