A platform in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans overlooks 400 acres of a cypress tree “ghost swamp,” a once thriving natural habitat dense with protective cypress trees up until the 1960s. Today, the area is mostly open water, with only a few sparse trunks struggling up from the waterline. In a neighborhood so damaged by Hurricane Katrina, this park serves as a sobering monument to the impact of human destruction on natural habitats. It was the construction of levees, canals, and channels that turned this freshwater swamp into…
