In 2007, more than 700 young people between the ages of 10 and 18 raised almost 3,000 tree seedlings and another 6,000 native grass plugs in an effort to restore Louisiana coastal wetlands to their original state.

These wetlands started losing ground in the 1930's, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began building levees along the Mississippi to open the river to navigation and prevent seasonal flooding. The levees worked as designed, but had an unintentional side effect. The deltas nature had so painstakingly created and redesigned over millennia began to disappear, leaving the coastline at the mercy of the Gulf of Mexico and its frequent storms.

As a result, Louisiana has to date lost more than 1,500 square miles of wetlands, and the loss continues. By the time I finish writing this, another acre will be lost. By next Christmas, another 30 square miles will have been forfeit to man's lack of foresight and his persistent belief that just because he can do something also means that he should.

Coming on the heels of this folly, manmade climate change - which exacerbates storms - has led to some of the worst hurricanes in recent history. Wetlands, once protected by native plants which bound the soil and held back the waves even during the worst of storms, now surrender to the rising waters. This influx of saline water, which can reach as far inland as 10 miles, leads to further ecological destruction, and this negative feedback loop - deterioration of coastal wetlands increasing the height and duration of tidal waves, which leads to more deterioration of the wetlands - has reached historic proportions. Coastal Louisiana is now losing ground to the ocean as fast as any region on Earth.  

As I wrote not long ago in The Panelist, these native coastal wetlands are our last (and perhaps only) defense in a world where climate change is taking its ultimate revenge, causing oceans to rise and threatening the livelihoods - and lives - of the one-third of humanity living within 60 miles of a coastline.

The Louisiana restoration project, formally known as the Coastal Roots Project, isn't just busywork, though it does keep these young people quite busy. Under the auspices of Louisiana State University, the program - established in 2001, before Katrina left its scars - is now a vital part of coastal restoration.   

In all, 17 Louisiana schools in 10 parishes (or districts) have instituted "can" gardens - fenced areas where seedlings are sprouted and nurtured in coffee cans or whatever container comes to hand until the fragile shoots are large enough to transplant back into their native habitat.

This restoration effort, largely paid for through a grant engineered by Barry Guillot, a teacher at Harry Hurst Middle School in St. Charles Parish, is part of an environmental stewardship program aimed at creating self-sustaining coastal environments through community partnerships. And the students are happy to help, because they - and their teachers and parents - are beginning to realize that the government can't (or won't) do it. Change really does take a village, and the little towns and villages along the Louisiana coast have seen their wetlands shrink for far too long.  

Earlier this year, Albert Cammon Middle School students proudly pushed 1,000 swamp maple and bald cypress seeds into individual containers. Next fall, these native species will help take back the land in places like Bayou Segnette State Park, one square yard at a time, until Louisiana's coast is once again a natural wetland, capable of holding the rising seas at bay. To date, more than 21,000 individual seeds or cuttings have been nurtured and replanted.

It's good for the young people. They get to get wet and dirty, to watch things grow, and to take field trips to places they might not otherwise see. The teachers call it environmental science; the students, raised on the miracles of wireless networks and IM, are beginning to realize that nature has a few magic tricks up her sleeve, too. The lessons, as simple as seed and soil or as complex as isolated ecologies, are shaping them for a future either as environmental scientists or simply as citizens of a planet in need of remediation after 100 years of industrial development that has led to equal parts technological excellence and environmental disaster.

At Archbishop Chapelle High School in Metairie, environmental science teacher Joann Haydel is using a $1,600 grant from the Brown Foundation to build a chain-link-enclosed nursery, the student-dug trenches piped with PVC for irrigation. The plot will be used to raise cordgrass, a native coastal plant known for its remarkable ability to bind wet coastal soils, even in the presence of hurricane-force waves. The students are also building a pond for aquatic plants, cuttings for which will come from the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge. Eventually, both the cordgrass and the aquatics will be returned to Bayou Sauvage, slowing rebuilding a wetland nearly lost to climate change, invasive species and benign neglect.

Can a handful of young people and a few conscientious teachers save the disappearing Louisiana wetlands? Perhaps not, but as former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev once said: "If not me, who? And if not now, when?"

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