800 Bags: 400 Mangrove Seedlings

Volunteers plan to set out 800 burlap bags filled with soil, inoculated with oil-eating bacteria and planted with mangrove seedlings and marsh grasses in an area hit hard by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.On Monday, about 30 volunteers were to fill the bags at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service compound in Venice. Then on Thursday, the same number will take boats 10 miles down the Mississippi River into the Pass a Loutre Wildlife Management Area.

The Restore the Earth Foundation led volunteers in December to set out 400 bags of marsh grasses.

Organizer Leslie Carrere says that sediment is already gathering around those lines of grasses and dirt — and in spite of the cold winter, the grasses are growing well.