Brown Pelican

"Brown Pelican, the second book in LSU Press's 'Louisiana True' series of short novelty books about Louisiana culture, tells the history of the brown pelican in order to tell the history of our relationship with nature in Louisiana. We know the pelican as the state bird of Louisiana. Its image adorns our state flag: a mother pelican pierces her left breast with her beak to give a trio of hungry chicks sustenance. It is a symbol that dates back to early Christianity, a literal passion of the pelican, this most human of birds. Most anywhere the brown pelican roosts - along most of the nation's coastal outline - but especially in Louisiana, the bird embodies humankind's relationship with the environment. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt inaugurated the first National Wildlife Refuge at Pelican Island, Florida. The nation's second wildlife refuge, established the following year, likewise protected birds, principally pelicans, at Louisiana's Breton Island. In postwar America, the ubiquity of the pesticide DDT endangered the species. By the mid-1960s, not one viable pelican nest remained in all of Louisiana. Conservation efforts saved the brown pelican here and elsewhere, heralding one of the great success stories in animal preservation. However, the pelican is again under threat, particularly in lower Louisiana, due to coastal land loss. 'Pelican' combines history, travel, and first-person narrative to complicate, deconstruct, and reassemble our vision of the subject, the region, and ourselves"--