BATON ROUGE - LSU has been awarded a grant from the National Park Service to preserve the 11,000-year-old mounds on campus. 

LSU announced the grant Tuesday morning and said the NPS granted the university $220,871 to conserve the mounds, specifically by mitigating erosion, repairing damage, and introducing drought-resistant grasses. 

“They are very old, and over the years there are some natural and sometimes unnatural damages that happen on the mounds," Sibel Bargu Ates, a member of the Committee to Preserve the LSU Campus Mounds, said.

LSU also matched the grant amount, bringing the total investment on the preservation to $441,742. 

"This grant was mainly to be able to preserve the mounds and prevent the erosion and the reinvigoration of the harmed area, and build a new irrigation system," Ates said.

In the past, the mounds were a common area for the public to run up and down, but fences were put up by the university to preserve the historic sites from erosion. The grant will also add vegetation that will slow erosion down.

"With people interacting with the mounds there was some damaging and to be able to stop the damage before we get to work to protect them physically, we put the fencing in a few years back and it allowed up to re-evaluate the damage and come up with the grant," Ates said. 

The mounds are believed to be the oldest man-made structures in Louisiana. They are believed to have religious and ceremonial significance and Ates said they should be treated with the same respect as a church or cemetery. 

Former Louisiana Gov. Huey P. Long took note of the mounds in the plans for the university and labeled the area as an Indian Reservation to stress the importance of protecting the sites. The mounds, now named the LSU Campus Mounds, were added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1999.

"Right now with the indigenous students and tribe members of today see these spaces as sacred and ceremonial places, so we have an obligation to preserve this very rare natural and culturally important place," Ates said.