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This nonprofit is replanting native species and reconnecting neighbors to the natural history of Louisiana’s Northshore.
It had been 30 years since the man had heard the distinct two-note whistle of a bobwhite quail. But after just two years of overseeing prescribed burns and replanting longleaf pine, the man was seeing the birds and hearing their nostalgic call in his yard again.
Inspired by the comeback, Jacob Bopp helped the man continue to restore native plants on his property. “That sound motivates him to keep going,” Jacob says of the property owner. “It’s such a simple thing. People want to be connected with their heritage. I didn’t grow up with this stuff, but when I hear that sound and when I go out in these forests, there’s something really familiar about it.”
Jacob and his friend Greg Caprancia run the People’s Forest Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring native habitat and, maybe above all, creating a culture of curiosity and connection to nature on Louisiana’s Northshore. Since starting in 2023, they have reintroduced their community to the natural world with guided nature tours, informative talks, and native landscaping.
A Homecoming
After Jacob graduated from high school, he had the urge to get far away from his hometown. Coming from the small town of Covington, Louisiana, that meant going west to Colorado State University.
But now, back home and armed with a degree in conservation biology, he wants nothing more than to reconnect with his Southern roots. And he wants the same for his neighbors, too.
“It started to feel not ethically right for me to come from a place that’s so culturally and biologically diverse and be in a place where there’s already a lot of people thinking about environmentalism,” Jacob says. “I just felt like I had to come back to my home — that we need more people thinking like that down here, or we’re going to lose what really makes the South special.”
What Once Was
Longleaf pine forests once thrived on 90 million acres along the southeast coast, hosting one of the most diverse ecosystems in the United States.
The trees can get up to 125 feet tall, and because they are fire-adapted, they naturally grow far apart from each other. That sparseness gives these forests a real dream-like feel: Sunlight pours through the overstory onto the wildflowers and grasses below, where there’s plenty of room to run freely (which is exactly what Jacob did when he was a child).
That sparseness is deceptive, however. Longleaf pine forests are home to more than 1,000 different species, including 900 endemic species; more than 50 different plants can be found in one square meter of its lush forest floor.
Just an hour outside of New Orleans, the Northshore was once a haven of green space blanketed in longleaf pine. But newcomers who arrived in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have changed the region with rapid residential and commercial developments.
“Everybody wants a little chunk of the Northshore,” Jacob says. “But it’s conflicting, because people come up here for space and at the same time, we’re eliminating it.”
Rewilding the Northshore
Now, about 80 percent of Louisiana’s coast is privately owned. So, in an effort to restore native landscapes, Jacob and Greg have turned to private landowners. “We’re not going to instantly just get large swaths of land turned into parks or anything,” Greg says. “So the way to do it is to get people to turn their own yard into a mini-park.”
In partnership with Greg’s company Millefleur Native Landscapes and with funding from a grant awarded by Village and Wilderness, the People’s Forest Foundation does just that through their Microhabitat Program.
The initiative connects landowners — homeowners, developers, schools, businesses — with resources to plant native species and revive vital habitat on their property. That can mean linking them to financial assistance programs and rebates, providing a free consultation, or taking the time to educate them on the cost-benefits of native landscapes.
Once the landowner is ready, Jacob and Greg come up with a landscaping design to restore the yard and get planting. The program has four tiers, encouraging landowners to maintain and expand their microhabitats over time. Every microhabitat gets a sign that explains its importance and displays which of the tiers it’s in. Landowners can move up a tier by installing a wildlife structure, like a bat house or bird feeder, installing an additional microhabitat on their property, or by maintaining their microhabitat for three or more years.
I want people to know that that’s your heritage. That’s yours, and we got to do something to make this better and make it happen.
– Jacob Bopp, founder, People’s Forest Foundation
The long-term goal is to transform enough yards that they provide a support network for pollinators, birds, and other local wildlife. In the future, Jacob and Greg hope to start an iNaturalist project so participants can upload photos of the different wildlife they see visiting the microhabitats in their yards.
“The biggest impact you can have is on private land,” Greg says. “We’re hoping to get corridors of neighborhood streets and have a planned design that’ll help pollinators. I think every little bit will have an impact, but if they’re tied together, then that’s the best impact that we can make.”
Remembering, Reconnecting
Beyond their Microhabitat Program, the People’s Forest Foundation also hosts community Nature Nights. During these gatherings, people can listen to a talk from an artist or scientist and join a tour into the woods for hands-on experience with nature.
Jacob teaches tour-goers all about the longleaf pine forests, encouraging them to pick up a pine cone, walk through the grass, and reconnect with the natural history of Louisiana, just like he did.
“A lot of these old-timers down here, they know what it was like pre-Katrina before a lot of the development happened, and they’re like, ‘I haven’t seen a firefly in so many years, or heard a bobwhite quail,’ and they used to,” Greg says.
For many of the people who join, these tours are the first time they are able to explore the forests that once dominated their home — if not for the first time ever, then the first time in many years.
“I want people to know that that’s your heritage,” Jacob says. “That’s yours, and we got to do something to make this better and make it happen.”
Having a Conversation About Conservation
Convincing people to do something unconventional, labor-intensive, and slightly off-course from their original plan is never easy. In their efforts to protect and restore native habitat on the Northshore, Jacob and Greg have had to do just that — often talking to people who are actively working against them. Still, they have found ways to have productive conversations with developers, homeowners, and hunters.
The key, they say, is to focus on how landscaping with native plants would benefit each person specifically.
Dealing with developers? Focus on the cost-benefits. Talk about how native plants will save money on water, maintenance, and other resources.
How about hunters? Unsurprisingly, what hunters who own land want above anything else is to hunt. “Supporting longleaf pine forests supports gopher tortoise, rare woodpeckers, and cool insects, and all this different stuff, but I don’t say any of that,” Jacob says. “I’m like, ‘If you’re burning your land, you’re going to get quail, turkey, and deer.’ That’s all they need to hear to say yes.” Those animals are like umbrella species for all the other plants and animals that depend on them to survive, Jacob says. “And who really cares whether you mention it or not? It’s still a benefit to these other species, as well.”
Homeowners? As someone who works on residential properties often, Greg makes a point to learn the properties of a plant that might benefit homeowners: “Some of them have food value, some of them have medicinal value, some of them bring the wildlife that are fun to see, like the birds or the butterflies, and some of them are helpful for water management down here.”
