2026 LMNA Rendezvous a Huge Success!

Roaring Bull Alligator at Lake Martin, Mike VanEtten photo and copyright 2026. "Upon hearing the low rumble bellowing sounds from the alligator, I would describe it as attention getting, and making you want to find the creature who is making the eerie sounds." ​Mike VanEtten

"Words can barely begin to describe how thankful and appreciative I am of everyone that helped this weekend, from the presenters to the locations and all of the AMN volunteers. 

We had such a positive response from attendees and everything went off without a hitch. None of this would have been possible without your support so please, give yourself a pat on the back!

And again, congratulations to Larry Allain for receiving the Caroline Dorman Award!

Utmost regards and until next time,

George Aoyagi "
​
President Acadiana Master Naturalists 

Emerging text by Caitlin Neal-Jones and LMNA members

Acadiana Master Naturalists hosted over 80 participants for the 2026 LMNA Rendezvous. The two-day conference took place across several venues in the Lafayette area and highlighted the rich natural and cultural heritage of Southwest Louisiana.

Larry Allain, Caroline Dormon Outstanding Louisiana Naturalist 2026 making his keynote speech.

Friday evening: Happy Hour, Prairie Talk, and Night-time Adventures
​Rendezvous 2026 kicked off with a Happy Hour learning session presented in partnership with Science on the Bayou, which highlighted some of the emerging scientific research taking place at UL Lafayette and around the Gulf Coast region. 

Later, participants enjoyed a delicious dinner of chicken and Eggplant Parmesan at the hotel and a private screening of Louisiana Grass Roots. This documentary, produced by Dr. Phyllis Griffard and directed by Jillian Godshall, tells the story of the coastal prairie that once blanketed Southwest Louisiana and the people currently working to restore it. Dr. Griffard was on hand for a post-screening Q&A and guidance on starting your own prairie restoration work. This show will air Statewide on LPB Wednesday, April 22nd 9 PM, Sunday April 26 5.30 PM! Congratulations to all who participated in its cocreation! This is an important story for the age.

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As the sun set, participants headed out to Atelier de la Nature in Arnaudville for Friday Night Field Adventures. The exhibition Attendees enjoyed moth sheeting, herping, bat facts, and stargazing guided by expert naturalists.
The Atelier itself was very striking! The exhibition won our hearts instantly with the massive mushroom installation and giant squid! Director Brandon Ballengée introduced the key displays by current and past naturalists, an installation for teaching about birds as survivors of the dinosaurian age and the extensive library! There was a nice lot to take in!

It was a highly fruitful night for herps, despite being a little on the cooler side, as several species of snakes were found under strategically placed corrugated metal sheets by L.A.R.E.’s hands-on herpetologist Jason Puma (AKA Rico Rabbits on Facebook). Jason impressed us by plunging in to catch everything he could, to give us all a closer look and opportunities to hold and touch the creatures of the Atelier's environs.  We had memorable encounters with whimsical sculptures, multiple Masked Racers that were placid and delightful to hold and touch, cool and smooth with regal physiognomies, Plain-bellied Water Snakes and Broad-banded Water Snakes with their keeled scales and feistier spirits, a Northern Cottonmouth that was also placid, didn't gape defensively and showed its best qualities, and a very graceful Rough Green Snake that posed beautifully. A large female American Bullfrog impressed us with her equanimity and 'long-leggedy' charm! 

Those of us who carry umbrellas as a prophylactic measure to prevent rainfall recognized the efficacy of Bat Detecting equipment in repelling the local bats, however a bold ambassador of the Chiroptera broke the jinx and flew over the group while hiking down the sculpture-filled nature trail (oddly enough, not far from the moth man sculpture!). Luckily, the brief rain clouds cleared up right on cue as attendees arrived and Dave Hossetter provided fine views of Jupiter and its moons and several star clusters. Some of the coolest wildlife photos from the weekend came from these adventures!

Saturday: Classroom and Field Sessions
​Saturday began with an early morning bird walk at the Nature Conservancy’s Cypress Island Preserve led by Patti Holland and Jim Parker. Nature Conservancy volunteer and Master Naturalist Tad Guidry set the stage by explaining his citizen science work monitoring prothonotary warbler nest boxes and sharing how attendees can join the project. The tour de force was a roaring bull Alligator! 

A tour of the UL Lafayette Ecology Center's native seed bank, led by Operations Manager Andre Daugereaux, offered a behind-the-scenes look at the collection, processing, and distribution of native seeds to support habitat restoration across Louisiana.

Dr. Beth Stauffer introduced the LO-SPAT project, a state-funded initiative using aquaculture and selective breeding to shore up oyster sustainability in the face of mounting environmental pressures.

Dr. Phyllis Griffard and Dave Patton gave a tour of the Acadiana Native Plant Project propagation greenhouse and many attendees were able to buy native plants during the tour. Dr. Griffard explained how the native plants are propagated and why it is important to choose plants with local genetics. Larry Allain took participants into the field for a conservation talk and a hunt for native pollinators. A male and female carpenter bee were caught and observed and many attendees were amazed by the nuanced iridescence of these specimens. They are not favored by home owners as they bore into wood soffits and deck boards but they are actually superb pollinators!

Meanwhile back at the hotel, participants enjoyed a plethora of presentations on naturalist topics. Dr. Bette Kauffman's workshop on citizen science tools gave attendees a guided tour of useful platforms: Nature's Notebook for phenology, eBird, and iNaturalist using Kauffman's own user-views. Many of us are familiar with her iNat project at Camp Hardtner as an example. Here we learned of the crucial role Citizen Science plays in filling in the data that supports research. She demonstrated key features and showed real project use-cases for these apps: Nature's Notebook phenology in her backyard, Ebird on Dauphin Island nature preserve and iNaturalist observations featuring in a book about Arkansas' plants. 

Mark Shirley delivered an engaging and highly informative talk on Louisiana's most iconic reptile, the American Alligator which has been utilized from Paleo-Native American times to the present day. 90% of our 'gators are in the coastal parishes. Shirley described their physiology, life-style and behaviors, and shared stories of his work with them in the Rockefeller Refuge. He related Louisiana's fantastic alligator conservation success from a nadir in the '60's-'70's to over 4,000,000 estimated today due to an ingenious system of authorized nest harvesting by land-owners for farm-rearing with a percentage of the 15 month old, 4 ft 'gators being returned to the wild to perpetuate the species and maintain the critical role as apex predator. This percentage has been reduced to 5% because we had previously underestimated their breeding success rate.

​Protected by CITES, there is now only a very small market for wild caught skins. Fashion houses Gucci, Hermes and Louis Vuitton only accept farmed skins now and have their own tanneries that turn out perfect skins, very highly valued, second for quality after Nile Crocodiles'.
Fun facts:

• Alligators are great parents, females will guard their nests and their young in the water fiercely, but they're bad neighbors as cannibalism is a leading cause of mortality.
• Gender is fixed according to egg temperature during days 15-21, < 86 degrees will be female, >89 degrees will be male.
• Young ones have very low survival rates - 95% mortality within 8 yrs. 
• Any 'gator you see that's over 10 foot is likely to be a male. The 'bulls' roar to attract the females and intimidate lesser males. They will fight to the death with contesting males, and the winner mates all the local females rapidly.​
• You can roughly estimate an Alligators' length from eye to nostril in inches to tell its length in feet.
• ​Buying alligator skin fashion items helps protect habitat for a very wide range of creatures.

Prehistoric Louisiana

Chris Kingwill took attendees on a biogeographic journey through prehistoric Louisiana. We learned about the earliest fossil remains of bivalves from the Jurassic being found by oil companies, and of the earliest shark remains in LA, the Squalicorax, and Mosasurus prognathodon ("forejaw tooth") a marine reptile of the Cretaceous from Castor Creek. Though Cenozoic material is sparse there's a notable holotype Anisouchous fortunatus herbivorous dinosaur from Caddo Parish 66-56 MYA.

During the Eocene epoch the Earth was very warm and mammoths were getting larger and more diverse. Birds were rapidly filling the niches vacated by the asteroid induced extinctions. Giant mammals like sloths, rhinos and horses have been found. Fish otoliths (ear stones), shark and ray teeth and cuttlefish rostra were discovered in a Cane River site. From the mid-Eocene there was an early whale called Nachitochia identified from 4 vertebrae found in the Cook Mountain Formation. There was a major embayment, a marine transgression expanded the ocean habitat.

Convergent evolution had fossil Basilosaurus (Zeuglodon) whales of the late Eocene being confused with marine reptiles for a while due to their skulls' un-whale-like nature, check out the serrated steak knife teeth!

Louisiana in the Miocene epoch was populated by giant mammals like Gomphothere forest elephants that had four tusks and giant reptiles such as the Hesperatestudo. The Miocene alligators were like ours today.  

The Great American Biotic Interchange 2.7 MYA really mixed things up when creatures from North and South American continents transmigrated. The Terror Birds moved north and passed through Louisiana to get to Florida. There were American Lions, Jaguars in Avery Island, Acadiana, Tapirs, Capibaras, Giant Ground Sloths, horses, Cooters, Opossums, Carolina Parakeets and Passenger pigeons. Mass extinctions were driven by humans and climate change. 

Martha Garner and Caitlin Neal-Jones helped participants unlock their inner writer, and shared prompts and tools to bring nature-based learning back to our own communities. We began with a meditative exercise imagining ourselves as a tree, a Live oak grounded firmly in the soil nourished by it and sending energy like white light from our outspread leaves down our trunks through our roots and into the nourishing soil. This was a very effective demonstration of how to ease people into creative nature writing. We all had a chance to participate proving the statement "If you can write a sentence, you can write a poem!" to be true. We were presented with brown paper bags and instructed to feel within, but not to look. We selected 3 descriptive words for our object and 3 emotions associated with it. We then wrote a poem and shared it with our fellows.​

Beetlemania with Steve Barney

Steven Barney’s bug talk with live specimens never fails to captivate and enthuse, and participants once again fell in love with his array of invertebrates. We learned to distinguish the harmless, herbivorous millipedes (slow, with 4 legs per segment pointing down) from the carnivorous centipedes (fast movers, with legs pointing out, and venomous fangs). The Giant American Centipede was wisely handled on its log rather than with bare hands, we learned that some defend themselves by squiting cyanide! All other exhibits except the Bark Scorpions were handled with great relish! The Texas Brown Tarantula was a big hit and a delight to hold. Its footsteps were both light and soft yet felt strong somehow - purposeful.

​The Horned Passalus or 'Bess' beetle was very endearing. Steve put it up to the microphone to broadcast its alarm vocalization! These stunning creatures have 17 distinct vocalizations for different contexts including parental interactions with their larvae! 

LMNA Photo Contest 2026 Winners!

Key Takeaways The connecting thread running through every session was the message that the natural world of Southwest Louisiana is extraordinary, it is under pressure, and ordinary people have an essential role to play in understanding and protecting it. Citizen science has never been more important, nor has it been so well supported with digital tools! 

The 2026 Rendezvous reinvigorated participants with notebooks full of ideas, heads full of prothonotary warbler, alligator, oyster, and prairie conservation facts, and a renewed sense of hope and activism for the natural resources of Louisiana. 

We enjoyed shopping for prairie plants at the Acadiana Native Plant project greenhouse, where we saw volunteers hard at work preparing plants for sale.