Wildlife Protection

Keeping It Simple: Easy Ways to Help Wildlife Along Roads

Hands, buckets, and a safe new spot for endangered mussels

In Grant Parish, Louisiana, when engineers prepared to replace an existing bridge on State Highway 122 over Swafford Creek, they noticed the only place for driving the piles of the proposed new bridge was in a bed of federally endangered pearlshell mussels. Biologists from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Louisiana University, and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries picked up the mussels, put them in buckets, and relocated them in good habitat upstream of the proposed construction. The mussels survived the relocation process and adapted well to their new environment.

--Apr 25, 2003

Lei Jin, (225) 242-4510 or ljin@dotd.louisiana.gov

Louisiana Department of Transportation photo

Pearlshell mussel

On or Near Bridges - Louisiana