To All Friends of the Atchafalaya:
It’s April again and time for the Friends of the Atchafalaya to meet again and review where we have been and where we are going.
In 2009, we brought back Atchafalaya Month and Experience Atchafalaya Days. We worked with the Atchafalaya Basin Program as they renewed the Program and began to emphasize the basic needs for Water Management with projects at several scales in the Basin. We worked with the Atchafalaya National Heritage Area in their quest for a management plan that will serve the needs and desires of the people in the area. And we worked with the other non-governmental organizations in the area to educate the public about the problems and initiatives in the Basin and along the coast.
We joined the Louisiana Wildlife Federation as an affiliate organization, added advisors from several different groups active in the Basin, and began an expansion of our Board of Directors to bring new blood and different perspectives into the group.
What we need now are YOU! We need your ideas, your energy and your contacts. We need the enthusiasm of the Atchafalaya Basin Advisory Committee to help us push for more funding for the Basin Program and the Heritage Area. We need your support to keep the Basin in peoples minds while the budgets are lean and the Coastal problems have everyone’s attention. We need you to create Experience Atchafalaya Days Events to introduce more people to the Basin.
We need for you to come out to our annual meeting on April 27, 2010 at the Bluebonnet Branch Library in Baton Rouge, at 7:00 PM. The Board will meet at the usual time of 6:30 PM and you are also invited to that meeting. The Board will choose its officers for 2010 and take care of pressing business. Then we will move to the membership meeting. The Board will update the membership on recent developments, announce the new officers, and open the discussion to our direction and future projects.
If you value the Basin and want to participate in our conservation efforts, come out to the Annual meeting and help us to spread the word.
The Atchafalaya Basin is worth conserving.
By the way, if you haven’t paid your dues for 2010,
you can go to the FOA web site “Join Us” page and pay online.
Every little bit helps us to get the message out about the Basin.