Conservationists talk preserving wild spaces in Baton Rouge

Amanda Takacs has just returned to her office after a morning spent stocking catfish in the Burbank Soccer Complex pond. Well, she didn’t exactly stock the fish herself, but she supervised preparations for about 500 fishermen expected during a weekend parishwide fishing rodeo.

Takacs is a naturalist with BREC’s Conservation Department, and when she isn’t maintaining a healthy fish count at local ponds, she’s leading school group tours at conservation areas, spearheading BREC’s recycling program, sorting through submissions for a nature photo contest and planning for a seven-week summer camp for kids.

“I’d love to say, as being part of the Conservation Department, that I spend every day out in the woods, but that’s unfortunately not always the case,” she says with a laugh.

There are 25 conservation parks across the parish, and Takacs and her department help create a cohesive management plan for each one. That includes first figuring out what types of animals and plants call each park home.

The team regularly organizes “bio blitzes,” where groups of researchers and volunteers trek through the parks over a 24-hour period documenting as many species as they can. They look for everything from species of birds to types of fungus growing on trees. That’s how they discovered, for example, a salamander breeding pool in a small stand of hardwood at Forest Community Park off Harrells Ferry Road.

Takacs and her team are finding a balance between keeping the wilderness of East Baton Rouge Parish wild and educating the general public on what thrives there.

They started a “Wood Walk” hiking series that runs October-March, visiting a different BREC park each month, such as the newer conservation area at Frenchtown Road. It’s a way to get people to parks they might not visit otherwise.

“You really can’t have one without the other,” Takacs says. “In order to have spaces like that, you need to have the conservation and management, but you also need to be able to bring people to these places and educate them on what you’re doing. People need to understand why their tax dollars are supporting these spaces.” brec.org/conservation