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Since 2002 much of the garden mulch sold from big-box retailers has come from coastal Louisiana’s shrinking cypress forests, home to a rich diversity of wildlife, including the “rediscovered” ivory-billed woodpecker. Because of skyrocketing demand, timber companies found “that mulch was valuable enough to feed whole trees into shredders,” says Paul Kemp, vice-president of Audubon’s Gulf Coast Initiative. But the booming mulch industry made a practice of logging stands of young bald cypress, so the swampland forest—already reeling from other pressures—couldn’t regenerate.

Now, in a major victory for Audubon, the Sierra Club, and other environmental groups that belong to a coalition called Save Our Cypress, the imperiled trees will likely be saved. Logging decreased significantly in the past year, after the coalition’s campaign of letter writing and educational talks convinced Wal-Mart and Lowe’s not to buy mulch made from coastal Louisiana’s forests. “We slowed it to a trickle,” exults Dean Wilson, basin keeper of the Atchafalaya, the largest swamp in the United States, who has helped track the damage over the years. Wilson routinely flies over forests with Southwings, a band of volunteers who pilot their aircraft to help environmental causes. “The timber companies logged 80,000 acres in six years, but in 2007, after the retailers made their decision, they only logged a few hundred acres,” he says.

The drop came at a critical time. In a recent Tulane University study, satellite images show that bottomland hardwood forests dominated by oaks and other trees suffered up to 85 percent mortality after Hurricane Katrina. Nearby cypress-tupelo forest, on the other hand, had minimal damage. “The lateral root system [of the cypress] weaves the forest together in a tapestry, so not only do they hold themselves up, but they hold all of the mid-story and canopy trees up,” explains Gary Shaffer, an ecologist at Southeastern Louisiana University. That means any hope of wetland ecosystem regeneration and future hurricane protection depends on the health of the cypress.

A lot of avian life depends on it, too, especially “the bigger birds that need larger trees, like osprey and herons,” says Melanie Driscoll, who heads up Audubon Louisiana’s Important Bird Areas program. Many warblers and cavity nesters like woodpeckers—ivory-bills and otherwise—are tied to the cypress swamps as well.

For now the big retailer moratorium on cypress mulch is largely holding firm. (A notable holdout is Home Depot.) Environmental groups suggest that better mulch alternatives include renewable pine bark, pecan shells, or even items from your own garden. (For other alternatives, read “The Dirt on Mulch” by going to audubonmagazine.org, clicking on the March-April 2007 issue cover, and going to Audubon Living.)—Kristin Elise Phillips
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