Teche Project

Enhancing the ecology of Bayou Teche: We took part in the spring Love the Boot campaign by cleaning trailhead parks at our dock sites. We also hosted a clean up day at various sites on the bayou and periodically pulled trash with boats to account for over 60 tons of trash in the past 14 years. We partnered with the Iris Conservation Initiative to plant irises at our paddle trail dock sites. We gave guidance to interested parties regarding wood duck nest box management. We have 60 participants in our program to rear ducks along the bayou, and are hatching over 800 ducklings annually. We hosted a youth workshop (Geaux Paddle) in June of 2024 with the goal of getting kids paddling on the bayou and teaching them about riparian ecology. We plan to continue this workshop each summer.

Encouraging Recreational Use on Bayou Teche: The Bayou Teche National Paddle Trail infrastructure was completed at the end of 2023, however, we plan to continue our work to add features to improve paddle trail usage into the future. Now that installation work is completed, we have shifted to promotion. In 2024, we got the Bayou Teche National Paddle Trail listed on the national trail finder platform, ALLTrails. We also worked with local governments and tourism offices to post information including our paddle trail maps and paddle trail planning tool that gives guidance to potential users about what to see and do for 1-day and weekend paddle excursions. In 2024, we worked with local outfitter, Wanderlust rentals to assist their proposal to install passive kayak kiosk rental stations at our dock sites and hope to have the first station installed in the summer of 2025.