Teche Project

Promoted the culture and history of bayou Teche: hosted the 11th annual shake your trail feather paddle parade and festival with over 250 attendees enjoying the live music and paddle excursion. Local cajun musicians entertained paddlers in our annual bayou Teche paddle parade. The Teche Project hosted our annual membership banquet in jeanerette at the historic albaina manor with over 110 attendees. A cultural presentation pertaining to the art Project inspired by natural elements of bayou Teche "meander mindset was presented. Represented the Teche Project and our mission at several events. We attended several event and wemalso gave presentations about our accomplishments and future goals to local government councils and civic organizations.

Encouraging Recreational Use on Bayou Teche: The TECHE Project continued work with the LA Office of Culture and Tourism under a grant (H.013508) to build the Bayou Teche National Paddle Trail access docks in each community along Bayou Teche. In 2023, we finished our work on that grant, installing the last access dock at Poche Bridge. This dock completed our goal to install 15 trailheads along the Bayou Teche National Paddle Trail. We also worked with the Town of Leonville, the Parish of St. Martin, and the Town of Arnaudville with the installation of their complimentary trailhead restroom facilities which were completed in 2023. There are now 3 full-service trailheads along the paddle trail. Also in 2023, we installed over 100 directional signs enabling people to locate the National Paddle Trail dock sites. We plan to continue our work to add features to improve paddle trail usage into the future.

Enhancing the ecology of Bayou Teche: We took part in the spring Love the Boot campaign by cleaning trailhead parks at all of our dock sites. We also periodically pulled trash with boats to account for a grand total of 60 tons of trash in the past 12 years. We partnered with the City if New Iberia and the Iris Conservation Initiative to plant irises on phase 3 of the New Iberia City Park bank restoration project. We held our annual wood duck management workshop in Franklin. We now have 60 participants in our program to rear ducks along the bayou, and are hatching over 800 ducklings annually. We received a grant from Keep Louisiana Beautiful and installed trashcans at 10 of our trailheads on the Bayou Teche National Paddle Trail. We also hosted a youth workshop (Geaux Paddle) in June of 2023with the goal of getting kids paddling on the bayou and teaching them about riparian ecology. The kid's art sculpture made with water bottles is on display at the Teche Museum in New Iberia. We plan to continue this workshop each summer.