Loyola U. professor lands out-sized grant

A Loyola University professor is catching rodents in Jefferson Parish using a grant nearly four times larger than average for his kind of work.

Craig Hood, a professor of biological sciences, was awarded a two- year, $108,000 grant from the National Park Service through the U.S. Department of the Interior to inventory mammals in Jean Lafitte National Park and Preserve. It's Hood's job to find out what kind and how many mammals live in the preserve as part of the Davis Pond project, a $110 million project to restore salinity for the entire Barataria Basin.

Jean Lafitte National Park was last inventoried about 20 years ago, Hood said. Unlike the Midwest, where a biologist can put out 100 traps and catch about 15 mice each night, 100 traps in the coastal wetlands will snare about one animal a night, he said. This is why the grant more than tripled the usual $30,000 for this type of study.

To make sure we've caught all animals in the (park), rather than two or three nights, it means 20 nights of trapping, Hood said.

So far Hood has inventoried dozens of native rodents, opossums, rabbits, raccoons, coyote and deer and has started a bat survey.

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