Southeastern NEWS

                                                       Southeastern Louisiana University
                                           Public Information Office
                                           publicinfo@selu.edu
                                           SLU 880, Hammond, LA 70402
                                           504/549-2341/fax 504-549-2061
    Date: 2/20/01
      Contact:                           Christina Chapple   12

Editors: Photo accompanies release
KEDDY NAMED INTERIM DIRECTOR AT SLU'S TURTLE COVE
     HAMMOND -- Internationally known wetlands biologist Paul Keddy has been named
interim director of Southeastern Louisiana University's Turtle Cove Environmental Research
Station.
     Keddy came to Southeastern from the University of Ottawa in 1999 as the Edward G.
Schlieder Endowed Chair in Environmental Studies. In addition to his research and teaching
duties as the Schlieder Chair, he will oversee the research and educational facility on Pass
Manchac while a national search is underway for a permanent director. 
     Keddy takes over from Southeastern biological sciences professor Robert Hastings, Turtle
Cove's director since 1984. Hastings remains a member of the university's biological sciences
faculty.
     Keddy said Turtle Cove will continue Hastings' successful policy of hosting education and
outreach programs, serving as a laboratory for university and community students, and offering
workshops for  teachers. Renovation will also continue at the facility, which was built as a
hunting camp in the early 1990s. 
     "Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Hastings and Assistant Director Robert Moreau, Turtle Cove
has a positive tradition as both a university and community resource in education and research,"
Keddy said. "Now, with the addition of the nearly $2 million that U.S. Rep. David Vitter (R-La.)
has gained for the Manchac Project (Southeastern's wetlands research projects in the Manchac
Swamp), we can even further enhance Turtle Cove's research potential."
     Keddy has a doctoral degree in plant ecology from the Dalhousie University in Halifax,
Nova Scotia, and bachelor's degree from York University in Toronto, Canada. He has taught at
the University of Guelph and the University of Ottawa; published more than 100 scholarly papers
on plant ecology, wetlands, natural history and botany; and has been active in 
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organizations such as  the World Wildlife Fund, the Committee on the Status of Endangered 
Wildlife in Canada, and the Nature Conservancy of Canada. 
     His first scientific book, Competition, published in 1989, won the Lawson Medal and
Gleason Prize. Keddy has since edited Ecological Assembly Rules: Perspectives, Advances,
Retreats and Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation and a second edition of
Competition.
     Last year, Keddy helped organize the Millennium Wetland Event, a worldwide scientific
conference in Quebec City, Canada, where he conducted a special program on "The World's
Largest Wetlands."
     Keddy said improvements on the drawing board for Turtle Cove, which has already
undergone approximately $50,000 in renovations, will now focus on upgrades for on-site science
laboratories and acquiring a new fleet of boats specially equipped for research. 
     On the research front, Keddy said Turtle Cove will be used as a laboratory by him and his
Southeastern biological sciences colleagues, and potentially by his scientific contacts throughout
the world. Research topics among the Southeastern faculty, he said, include the effects of
pollution on fish, fish parasites, bird communities and amphibians. 
     Under the auspices of the Manchac Project, an approximately three-year project funded
by the $2 million in federal funds from the Environmental Protection Agency, Keddy plans to set
up a large outdoor experiment in the marsh behind Turtle Cove. Accessible via a one-half mile
boardwalk, the experiment will help fully classify the habitat of the marsh, a crucial step in
planning restoration efforts and land use.
     "This is a new and exciting step forward," Keddy said. "There is a new trend toward
conducting these large scale experiments. We need to describe what plants and animals are out
there, determine rates of flooding and salinity. Then we can change the physical environment and
measure how organisms respond."
      According to Nick Norton, head of Southeastern's biological sciences department, the
Manchac Project calls for scientists to examine the effects that salt water intrusion and
plant-eating animals, such as nutria, are having on the different plant species and to perform a
thorough inventory of the area's bird population and the effects of parasites on fish species. In
addition, the team will investigate the effects that certain contaminants -- primarily from the
petrochemical and agricultural industries -- are having on the living organisms of the region.
                             -SLU-
Press release available online at www.selu.edu/NewsEvents/PublicInfoOffice/newsp01.htm