The Burden Forest, a 440-acre natural world off the side of Interstate 10, hasn’t been the same since Hurricane Gustav in 2008.

The Category 4 storm devastated its tree population, costing about $9.2 million in timber and forest damage statewide, according to the LSU AgCenter, which owns the sun-splotchy forest.

But for more than 15 years, Baton Rouge residents have helped replant the forest plot by plot. Hundreds celebrated Arbor Day at the AgCenter Botanic Gardens Saturday by planting a tree in the Burden Forest or taking one home to reforest their own area.

“The public is helping Mother Nature along,” said Jeff Kuehny, director of the botanic gardens.

Baton Rouge Green, a local non-profit organization that works to maintain the city’s tree canopy, hosted the tree giveaway, with 16 types of trees for attendees to choose from. The infant plants lined the forest floor, some carried away by children who hugged the pots to them as they stumbled back toward the hayride parking transport with their parents.

GPS coordinates were given to people who planted trees to keep track of their tree over the next few years.

National Arbor Day is celebrated annually on April 28, though the date can vary for different states depending on climate and planting season. Louisiana Arbor Day is held the third Friday of every January.

Attendees weren’t afraid to get dirty. Thick mud — the remnants of the rain that postponed the event from the week earlier — coated their shoes and pant bottoms as they hiked through the Burden Forest to this year’s replanting plot. 

Piper Dixon, 3, helped her mom Eva Dixon dig a hole for their tree. The mother-daughter planting pair came from Gonzales to participate in Saturday’s free event. Eva Dixon said she felt it was important for her daughter to get involved in events like these.

“I had seen some of the [tree] damage, not so much in the forest area, but just around town,” Dixon said. This year was their first at Arbor Day, and they plan to come back.

The sun shined down on the Dixons and others in the planting plot, only sparse trees standing to shade them.

Kuehny said Burden lost 75% of its tree canopy during Gustav in 2008. That shade has crept back as the public helped plant over 3,000 trees since the storm hit.

Birds, raccoons and other creatures that lived in the Burden trees were left displaced by the hurricane.

“They didn’t have much of a place to go,” Kuehny said of the local wildlife. “There was no food…Their shelter was disrupted out here.”

Gustav is far from the only storm that’s threatened Louisiana’s wildlife.

Hurricane Katrina killed more than 320 million trees, according to a 2007 analysis. A biologist with the U.S. Geological survey saw the decline of 10 Louisiana bird species after Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which struck within a month of each other.

The 2020 hurricane season was the most active Atlantic season on record. It caused unprecedented damage to forests throughout Louisiana, totaling around $1.5 billion in timber damage, according to the AgCenter.

Hurricane Laura, a Category 4 storm that struck that year, destroyed nearly 800,000 acres of timber in Louisiana and cost $1.2 billion in timber damage, according to the AgCenter. Hurricane Delta, striking in the same season, cost around $297 million.

Forestry is the state’s most lucrative agricultural output, the Shreveport Times reported in 2018. The sector accounts for approximately $13 billion in annual output.

Though the event sought to restore the forest, attendees did more than plant. Smokey Bear wandered the crowd for pictures and fist bumps, and cables were set up for the adventurous to scale a tall tree.

Visitors could also try their hand at timbersports.

Meredith Owens, a natural resources ecology and management senior and president of LSU’s forestry club, stood across a log from another student, crouching down as they pulled a cross saw back and forth.

Two young boys took over the task, eventually freeing a slice of wood with a purple LSU symbol spray painted on, earning the cheers of a small crowd of families and other members of Timber Tigers, LSU’s timbersports club.

The club also had knife throwing set up for attendees, giving each person three blades to aim at a bullseye a few feet away. 

The forestry club has participated in cleaning up damaged trees following past hurricanes, Owens said.

“I think Arbor Day is an extremely important day…I’m very pro-conservation, pro-environmentalism, and having people actually take a stake, knowing that they can come back and say ‘that’s a tree we planted, look how big it is,’ it’s a long-lasting effect that will leave impacts on families for a long time,” Owens said.