"Alarm Raised As Mystery Pest Destroys Mississippi Delta Marsh"

"Eric Newman speeds through the maze of bayous at the Mississippi River's mouth with the confidence of someone who's done this for decades. He points to prime spots to catch redfish, where crabbers go for blues and the grassy channel where his grandfather had a fishing camp.

Suddenly, he slows his boat. The intimately familiar has just become alarmingly unfamiliar. 'Two months ago, this was beautiful,' he said, easing past mud flats that had been lush with eight-foot-tall marsh grass. Clumps of blackened roots are all that's left. 'Looking at it now, it just blows me away. I don't even know how to navigate it.'

Roseau cane, a wetland grass considered vital to the health of Louisiana's precarious coast, is dying at an unprecedented rate in south Plaquemines Parish. Since fall, thousands of acres of cane across about 50 miles of the lower Mississippi Delta have gone from green to brown. Many areas, such as the one Newman found Friday (April 7) near Venice, are now shallow, open water."

Tristan Baurick reports for the New Orleans Times-Picayune April 11, 2017.