Naturalist Amanda Takacs and her team in BREC’s Conservation Department are trying to balance conserving the wilderness of East Baton Rouge and educating the public on what thrives there.
As 225 details in a report from its latest issue, the team conducts a “Wood Walk” hiking series from October through March that visits a different BREC park each month, such as the newer conservation area at Frenchtown Road. The series is a way to get people to parks they might not visit otherwise.
“You really can’t have one without the other,” Takacs says. “In order to have spaces like that, you need to have the conservation and management, but you also need to be able to bring people to these places and educate them on what you’re doing. People need to understand why their tax dollars are supporting these spaces.”
Takacs’ team also helps create a cohesive management plan for each of the 25 conservation parks throughout East Baton Rouge Parish.
The plan involves first figuring out what types of animals and plants call each park home.
The team regularly organizes “bio blitzes,” where groups of researchers and volunteers trek through the parks over a 24-hour period documenting as many species as they can.
They search for everything from species of birds to types of fungus growing on trees. That’s how they discovered, for example, a salamander breeding pool in a small stand of hardwood at Forest Community Park off Harrells Ferry Road.
