2025 Class of Fellows: Kenneth Bahlinger, FASLA, Louisiana Chapter

Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, State of Louisiana, Baton Rouge, LA
by

x

Kenneth Bahlinger is a nationally recognized leader in coastal issues working for the State of Louisiana for the past 34 years, where he has been instrumental and quietly effective in creating the state's policies, management, and implementation strategies for coastal wetlands issues. As Senior Project Manager with the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, he directs multiple large-scale coastal ecosystem restoration projects involving numerous constituencies and stakeholders in the coastal regions. His leadership and his regimen of study and reflection, together with his skills in diplomacy, creative problem-solving, and public advocacy, have led to innovative strategies and coastal restoration projects that are now international models for success. Beginning in 1991, he served as landscape architect at the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources Coastal Restoration Division where he assumed leadership of two programs: the Coast Vegetative Planting program, a unique partnership through which native marsh vegetation is planted and monitored throughout Louisiana's coastal zones; and the Christmas Tree Program, where Christmas trees are recycled by placing them in wetlands to help protect the natural marsh and shoreline. Kenneth has also successfully led multidisciplinary and multi-agency teams through planning, design, and implementation of large-scale coastal restoration projects. He has been responsible for dozens of coastal restoration projects using plants to stabilize shorelines and establish vegetation on shallow bay bottom terraces, such as plantings on newly dredged marsh platforms; native grasses and trees on levees; and native grasses on dunes and marshes on remote barrier islands. Kenneth's expertise and leadership and his many significant contributions to the conservation of natural resources in coastal Louisiana have been invaluable and were recognized with the 2017 Alfred B. Lagasse Medal from ASLA.