perhaps i am just an optimist, but it sure felt good to breath in the fresh air near the coast of lousiana. with all the imagery we are inundated with today regarding bp's oil spill, i wanted to find the strength that still exists & celebrate this. i got this feeling while talking to a friend in boston that instinctually drove me to capture this – and what "this" is, remained a mystery until a few phone calls later. through this friend i was connected with a former ED of lousiana's democratic party and then on to his fishing neighbor, aaron pierce in galliano louisiana. little did i know i was being connected, not with a fisherman that i originally was seeking to interview, but a gentleman who is bringing back to life the shoreline of lousiana – one mitigation bank at a time. back in 2004, having grown up as a fisherman, aaron started to notice how the land was deteriorating. this is when he started working for resmitigation. today he is in charge of nursery operations. what is interesting is that resmitigation is not a common mitigation company – they are unusual in the fact that they provide their own plants for the land that they restore – creating a full cycle.

at 6:30am, aaron was at our hotel ready to direct us to his nursery, which was once a cattle farm. as the sun was rising and beating down (it's sweaty hot even at 7am) on acres of land just off a main road, i realized i was standing on a hidden gem that most of us have no idea about. for the last 30-50 years, near the coast of louisiana, levies have been built, water pumped out & wetlands have been filled in with land to raise cattle & crops. we as humans, as a result have killed off precious wildlife, and distroyed the coast though this type of land usage – it's not just katrina & the oil spill that have had a hand in this deterioration. aaron is doing just the opposite to resore these wetlands back to the way they once were. resmitigation propagates & sells the plants that are sold to the DNR & NRCS for restoration. in addition, they sell to oil companies that are distroying the coast and thus required to repair the damage. resmitigation owns a total of 15,000 acres that have been or will be transformed into mitigation banks. To give you an idea of volume, aaron plans to plant 20,000 plantings of bitter panicum (a type of grass) in october/november on a barrier island that he has been told has been destroyed by oil. He intends to head down in august to make sure that it has been cleaned up, as word has it, so he can move forward with the planting.

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