Facilities

Visitor Center

The complex visitor center, a restored 19th-century planter's house, is situated on the 40-acre Black Bayou Lake Environmental Education Center. It was purchased, moved and renovated with funds raised almost entirely from the private sector. .

Adjacent to the visitor center are the recently-opened Conservation Learning Center, an arboretum with more than 100 native Louisiana woody plants, and a prairie demonstration area with native grasses and wildflowers.

Other facilities include:

• A 400-foot wildife pier (privately funded by International Paper).
  An observation deck in a more remote area of the lake (privately funded by Cleco Corporation).
• A boardwalk that traverses 1.2 miles of representative wetlands (grant from the LA Governors Rural Initiative).
• A 100-seat shaded outdoor pavilion.
• A birdwatching blind funded by a grant from the National Wildlife Refuge Foundation.
• A wetlands art project that opened up a little-visited part of the refuge.
• A marked canoe trail on Black Bayou Lake that helps paddlers explore the lake without getting lost.