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Noms de Bayous: Relics of a French Culture

KEDM Public Radio | By Kelby Ouchley

Published May 11, 2015 at 9:00 AM EDT

Lest you think French influence on our state is restricted to the southern half, consider the sinuous streams of northeast Louisiana. They flow through our geography with Franco-laden labels both pure and bastardized - and with good reason. Frenchmen were the first to establish a lasting presence. They were not Acadians.They plied every major stream in northeast Louisiana. They put their names on nearly all of them.

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Kelby Ouchley

Kelby was a biologist and manager of National Wildlife Refuges for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for more than 30 years. He has worked with alligators in gulf coast marshes and Canada geese on Hudson Bay tundra. His most recent project was working with his brother Keith of the Louisiana Nature Conservancy on the largest floodplain restoration project in the Mississippi River Basin at the Mollicy Unit of the Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge, reconnecting twenty-five square miles of former floodplain forest back to the Ouachita River.

See stories by Kelby Ouchley