Grant will help rebuild wildlife lab - Acadiana's Multi-Media News Station

GRAND CHENIER, La. (AP) - Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge has been given a $1 million in federal recovery grant to build a fish lab complex to replace facilities destroyed by Hurricane Rita in 2005.

The American Press reports the money, received from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will go toward the total $3.7 million cost of the 5,460-square-foot lab.

Refuge program manager Tom Hess says the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries also will fund the project. Construction could begin in 2014.

Six of the destroyed buildings - including the fish lab, boat shed, chemical storage building and alligator incubator and storage shed - will be consolidated into three new buildings.

Hess said research done at the biological complex, which was built in the 1970s, has helped save once-endangered species such as alligators.

On the web: http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/refuge/rockefeller-wildlife-refuge