Who's still thinking about Christmas in spring? The New Orleans Department of Sanitation, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Guard. This generation-long partnership comes together for the annual Christmas tree drop. Christmas trees are picked up curbside after the new year, packaged into bundles, and dropped via helicopter into a local wetlands area to build back land mass. The National Guard uses it as a training exercise, and the nearby wildlife refuge BayouSauvagegets a coastal restoration project.
This year the project chose to focus on the Joe Madere unit of the refuge. Hear from the project players:
Check out this video of the National Guard's helicopter teamlifting off with the bundle of trees from the staging area:
...and heading to the marsh to get the job done:
Laine Kaplan-Levenson / WWNO
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A National Guard black hawk lifts a bundle and heads towards Joe Madere marsh unit in Bayou Sauvage
Laine Kaplan-Levenson / WWNO
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WWNO
Laine Kaplan-Levenson / WWNO
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WWNO
CW3 Ryan Wilson, of the Louisiana National Guard, talks to the guys in the helicopter from the ground.
Laine Kaplan-Levenson / WWNO
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WWNO
Members of the National Guard take a break from being tough when they see a little bunny rabbit running through the staged christmas tree bundles.
Laine Kaplan-Levenson is a producer and reporter for NPR's Throughline podcast. Before joining the Throughline team, they were the host and producer of WWNO's award-winning history podcast TriPod: New Orleans at 300, as well as WWNO/WRKF's award-winning political podcast Sticky Wicket. Before podcasting, they were a founding reporter for WWNO's Coastal Desk, and covered land loss, fisheries, water management, and all things Louisiana coast. Kaplan-Levenson has contributed to NPR, This American Life, Marketplace, Latino USA, Oxford American (print), Here and Now, The World, 70 Million, and Nancy, among other national outlets. They served as a host and producer of Last Call, a multiracial collective of queer artists and archivists, and freelanced as a storytelling and podcast consultant, workshop instructor, and facilitator of student-produced audio projects. Kaplan-Levenson is also the founder and host of the live storytelling series, Bring Your Own. They like to play music and occasionally DJ under the moniker DJ Swimteam.
