312 Department of Conservation of Louisiana 



In 1922, due to a break in the levee at Poydras, this 

 area was flooded by crevasse waters and the water remained 

 on the land 54 days. In the trapping season of 1922-23, 

 the winter following the inundation, little or no trapping 

 was done. In the 1923-24 season the take of muskrats 

 amounted to 20 per cent of a normal season. In the 1924-25 

 season the take was approximately 70 per cent. The two 

 following winter trapping seasons, 1925-26 and 1926-27, 

 saw these marshes yield the trappers of the region 100 per 

 cent of fur and better. When the Poydras levee broke in 

 1922, a mistake was made by the then conservation depart- 

 ment officials in giving trappers permission to shoot the 

 muskrats and when the water inundated the marshes trap- 

 pers with shotguns killed hundreds of thousands of these 

 refugee fur animals while they were clustered on top of 

 their muskrat hills. In spite of this needless, ill-considered 

 and wanton slaughter, the muskrats so repopulated these 

 marshlands that five years later we find this very area con- 

 tributing about 80 per cent of the 1926-27 muskrat crop of 

 Louisiana. 



In April of 1927 this territory again flooded when an 

 artificial break was made in the levee system at Caernarvon 

 to save New Orleans from a feared crevasse during the 

 high water period of that year. The water remained on 

 the Delacroix Island muskrat marshes approximately 108 

 days, compared to a 54-day submersion in 1922, but the 

 food grasses came back to their former luxurious abundance 

 soon after the water drained off, as they did five years pre- 

 viously. 



During the 1928 flood period strict orders were issued 

 from the Department of Conservation agents, assisted by 

 trappers holding special commissions, and with the cooper- 

 ation of lessees and land owners, all such violations were 

 kept down and instead of killing the refugees at a time 

 when their furs were of no value, life rafts were built and 

 floated in the crevasse waters and thousands were saved 

 from drowning. 



