Addressing global warming and biodiversity through forest restoration and coastal wetlands creation

The Climate Challenge is a partnership between the Department of Energy and the electric utility industry to reduce, avoid, and sequester greenhouse gases. A portion of the initiative, the sequestration of greenhouse gases, is the focus of this presentation. Over 4 million acres of bottomland hardwood forests were cleared for agriculture in the Mississippi River Valley in the 1970s. Reestablishing these forests would improve depleted wildlife habitats, serve as wildlife corridors, increase biodiversity, and decrease soil erosion. Louisiana is losing coastal wetlands at a rate of approximately 25 square miles/year. This coastal erosion is due to a number of factors and many efforts are currently underway to address the matter. One such effort is the use of material generated in the dredging of navigational canals; however, this material is low in nutrient value, making the regeneration of marsh grasses more difficult. In addition, bottomland hardwood forests and coastal wetland grasses are excellent 'carbon sinks' because they take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it in living plant tissue. Entergy Services, Inc. is an electric utility with a service territory that comprises portions of both the Lower Mississippi River Valley and the Gulf of Mexico coastline. This provides an opportunity to positively address both habitat losses noted above while at the same time addressing global warming, forest fragmentation, and biodiversity. Entergy, through its affiliation with the UtiliTree Carbon Company, is participating in projects that will investigate the feasibility of using bottomland hardwood reforestation on cleared marginal farmlands now managed by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Entergy has also begun a research project with the Environmental Protection Agency and the State of Louisiana. The research is a compost demonstration project that will utilize wood waste generated through our tree-trimming program as a compost material that will be mixed with low nutrient dredge material to create new coastal wetlands. Taken together, Entergy's initiatives will be able to address global warming through carbon sequestration, restore fragmented forest habitats, reduce coastal erosion and improve the quality of a vital coastal aquatic nursery habitat. Efforts will be made to manage the created habitats for biodiversity. Pulling all these ideas together creates an effect in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In such a synergy of ideas, there are no losers and the winners are both industry participants and the environment.