Place

Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge

Also known as: Bayou Sauvage Urban NWR

23,000-acre brackish-marsh-and-bottomland-hardwood national wildlife refuge entirely inside the city limits of New Orleans — one of the largest urban national wildlife refuges in the United States. Established 1990; managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The refuge sits between Lake Pontchartrain to the north and Lake Borgne to the southeast, protecting some of the last unmodified marsh in the metro area. Habitat: brackish-tidal marsh, bottomland hardwood, freshwater impoundments. Wildlife: 340+ bird species, American alligator, manatee, river otter; a major stopover on the Mississippi Flyway. The refuge is also a recovering Hurricane Katrina (2005) impact zone — much of the marsh interior was scoured during the storm and has been rebuilding for two decades.

Practical

The refuge is reached via U.S. Highway 90 east from downtown [[french-quarter|New Orleans]] (~20 minutes). Public-access points include the Ridge Trail (boardwalk through bottomland hardwood and along Bayou Sauvage), the Joe Madere Marsh Trail (raised boardwalk through brackish marsh), and the visitor information stations along Highway 90 and Highway 11. No entrance fee. Open daily, dawn to dusk.

Bird-watching is the primary public use: 340+ species recorded, with peak waterfowl numbers November–February (gadwall, blue-winged teal, green-winged teal, [[northern-pintail|pintail]], shoveler, lesser scaup) and peak warbler-and-wading-bird diversity April–May and September–October. Roseate spoonbill, [[white-ibis|white ibis]], tricolored heron, and reddish egret are reliably seen on summer marsh-walks. American alligator are present year-round in the freshwater impoundments and bayous.

The refuge is a working post-Katrina recovery site — Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge scoured much of the interior marsh in 2005, and the refuge has spent two decades restoring marsh-edge, breaching old oil-and-gas canal spoil banks to restore tidal exchange, and replanting marsh grasses on the most-degraded interiors.

What links here, and how

Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.

Scientific

shares approach with

Barataria Preserve the two principal public-conservation deltaic-wetland sites in the New Orleans metro

contains

Mississippi River delta ecology urban-edge brackish marsh inside the delta
New Orleans 23,000-acre urban wildlife refuge inside the city limits

contained by

White ibis abundant breeding-and-foraging species at the urban refuge

4 inbound links · 5 outbound

Practical

See also

What links here, and how