American Wetlands Month - 2004

Click below to find out what events and activities are occurring in your State during American Wetlands Month.

Alabama
Marshall County

Marshall County, Alabama, land that was drained and used for crops

Chris Clay, a Marshall County, Alabama, landowner, enrolled 144 acres on a floodplain adjacent to the Paint Rock River in the Wetlands Reserve Program. As a result, 75 acres that were drained to produce crops have been restored to wetlands with the remaining 69 acres to serving as protection. In order to restore the original hydrology of the land, a dike was constructed during the fall of 2003 along with two water control structures to enhance waterfowl habitat. At full pool, approximately 40 acres will be covered by shallow water.

Eighty-five acres have been planted with a mixed species of hardwood trees that are adaptable to wetland sites. Fourteen acres of native grasses and
6 acres of wildlife food plots will also be planted later on this year. This area will provide a habitat for fish and wildlife, improve water quality, and provide educational and recreational opportunities for residents Marshall County and the surrounding area.
Your contact is Julie Best, NRCS public affairs specialist, at 334-887-4549, or julie.best@al.usda.gov.

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Arizona
Near Flagstaff

Earth Team volunteers in Arizona plant vegetative plugs near Flagstaff, to help to restore Hay Lake to a wetland

NRCS in Arizona has helped restore more than 1,500 acres to a wetland through the Hay Lake Wetlands Reserve Project. Others who helped make this project a success were the Arizona Game and Fish Department, U.S. Forest Service, Grand Canyon Trust, Audubon Society, Coconino Rural Environmental Corps, and the Wildlife Society.
Your contact is George Couch, NRCS public affairs specialist at 602-280-8806, or george.couch@az.usda.gov.

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Arkansas
Pulaski County

James Harness, a civil engineering technician at the Lonoke Irrigation Office, attaches a radio antenna to his four-wheeler

NRCS is enjoying a unique opportunity to work with 12 landowners in Pulaski County, Arkansas to restore a wetland on a large portion of the Pennington Bayou watershed. “This is the first project in the U.S. where individual landowners formed a group to restore land to a wetland,” said Mark Tidwell, Hazen Technical Service Center wildlife biologist.

Hydrology restoration will begin in June on the 7,156 acre project, between Wrightsville and Woodson, Arkansas. “The project will transform marginal farmland into recreational land greatly enhancing wildlife habitat,” said Gar Lile, landowner who has committed 1,140 acres of his land to the undertaking.

The workhorse of data collection, the Trimble data collector, allows the user to electronically collect the data necessary for topo surveys on the WRP site

Work began in December 2002, with a survey of the entire 8,417-acre Woodson area to ensure restoration wouldn’t flood homes or roads not in the project area. “To accomplish this we used eight GPS survey rover units from NRCS and two from the Audubon of Arkansas,” Tidwell said. “The bulk of the survey was completed in six days. Our first restoration will include constructing levees and installing pipes to create shallow water followed by tree planting in the fall of 2004. Once the project is complete, we will have 2,100 acres of shallow and permanent water areas, 250 acres of native grasses and more than 3,500 acres of trees nearly identical to the forest type that once existed in the Arkansas River valley lowlands,” he added.
Your contact is Creston Shrum, NRCS public affairs specialist, at 501-301-3168, or creston.shrum@ar.usda.gov.

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Delaware
New Castle County

Wetlands on the Dulaney Manor farm

With help from the NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and State cost-share program, Eric and Judy Hopkins have created over twenty acres of wetlands on their Dulaney Manor farm they bought in the southwest corner of New Castle County, Delaware, in 1986. Their 120-acre farm produces corn, small grains, and soybeans but now with the creation of wetlands and ponds, the Hopkins also have a nesting area of Great Blue herons -- approximately 26 at the last count. “Creating waterfowl habitat is Eric’s primary interest,” said NRCS district conservationist, Jack Lakatosh. Much of this work on the Hopkins farm has been done by excavating, diking, and restoring prior converted wetlands back to original hydrology. Grass buffers have been installed around the entire cropland edge creating excellent cover for wildlife. Food buffers such as sorghums and millets have been planted around the wetland enhancing opportunities during the duck hunting season. “Eric wants to create two new ponds this year which he will make as natural as possible by planting native grasses, trees, and shrubs for this area,” said Lakatosh. “Eric’s only limitation is that he may run out of hydric soils (soils needed to create a wetland) on the farm to create the perfect wetland he strives for.”
Your contact is Paul Petrichenko, NRCS public affairs specialist, at 302-678-4180, or paul.petrichenko@de.usda.gov.

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Georgia
Lamar County

New wetlands nature trail being developed at the Barnesville Expo Center in Lamar County, Georgia

NRCS district conservationist, Carmen Westerfield is lending a hand with the first phase of installation of a new wetlands nature trail being developed at the Barnesville Expo Center in Lamar County, Georgia, by the Lamar County Agricultural Authority. The Nature Center is unique as it is adjacent to the Lamar County Schools and  features wetlands, natural and cultural history, remnants of old farm fields, and upland areas. The wetland area at the school along with the wetland trail provides examples of the different types of wetlands in the Piedmont including constructed wetlands, a bottomland hardwood wetland -- typical along middle Georgia streams, naturally occurring wetlands, and naturally "created" wetlands such as beaver ponds.
Your contact is Mary Ann McQuinn, NRCS public affairs specialist at 706-546-2069, or mary.mcquinn@ga.usda.gov.

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Indiana
Muscatatuck Bottoms

Muscatatuck wetland wet herbaceous layer consisting of forbs and a snag layer

The Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) and NRCS have come to the rescue of Indiana farmers in the “Muscatatuck Bottoms.” For decades, farmers in Scott, Jackson, and Washington Counties cleared the land along Muscatatuck River in the hopes that the fertile sediments deposited by the waterway would help produce crops. Unfortunately the river also removed soils, washed-out access roads, and made fields too wet to farm. But now, thanks to WRP, 65 landowners have sold easements on over 4,000 acres of their lands to restore wetlands. In addition to WRP easements, NRCS is providing technical assistance to restore the original wetland conditions. A 15-mile stretch of the river known as the “corridor of restorations,” is expanding wildlife habitat resources adjoining several thousand acres of wildlife management area operated by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Now, in addition to waterfowl, shorebirds, wading birds, migratory songbirds, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals; several species-of-special-concern are now seen on these WRP sites including bald eagle, American bittern, yellow-crowned night heron, great egret, river otter, and copperbelly water snake. Other notable species visiting the Muscatatuck sites include sandhill cranes, whooping cranes, green and great-blue herons.
Your contact is Mike McGovern, NRCS public affairs specialist, at 317-290-3222 ext. 324, or mike.mcgovern@in.usda.gov.

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Indiana
Linton

A drag line crane starts the levee building process at Beehunter Marsh. Miles of levees will contain wetlands and provide great places to hike and bird watch

Dave Stratman, a biologist with NRCS, is helping restore wetlands and wildlife habitat to Goosepond, an 8,000-acre former farm south of Linton, Indiana.

When he looks at it, he sees more than what's there now -- an unimpressive sight, dirt, and weeds. He sees the future.

Today, the area looks like most other flat Indiana land, and nothing like a pond. But Stratman envisions miles of shallow water with thousands of endangered sandhill cranes dropping out of the sky and flocks of ducks bursting from the surface.

Stratman talks regularly with bird watchers, hunters and wildlife enthusiasts who hope to flock to the area themselves one day.

A coalition of conservation groups and State and Federal agencies is working to bring Stratman's vision to reality.

Goosepond and Beehunter Marsh once made up a massive wetland complex in southwest Indiana. The area has been drained and continuously pumped for farming since the mid 1900s. Owners have battled flooding ever since.

Wetlands on the property are being restored through the NRCS's Wetlands Reserve Program.

Section of Goose Pond project area, viewed from above

"The area will be restored nearly to its natural state, and it will be permanently protected," said Stratman. "But the public won't necessarily be welcome to enjoy it."

The Goosepond complex may be divided up and placed on the auction block this summer.

"If the area is fragmented, it won't reach its full restoration potential, either for wildlife or people. This land needs to be open to the public. It is too valuable a resource to be divided and locked up," said John Goss, Department of Natural Resources director.

The current landowner, Maurice Wilder, is interested in selling the property for public use, but no price has been negotiated. In anticipation of a sale, Goss is pulling together potential funding partners.

"It's becoming a real groundswell. People are calling and writing asking the DNR to buy Goosepond," said Goss.

Goss is urging conservation organizations and individuals to join the effort by donating to the Goosepond Trust in care of: Natural Resources Foundation -- Goosepond Trust, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, 402 W. Washington Street Indianapolis, Ind., 46204.

Images by John Maxwell, Indiana Department of Natural Resources photographer.  Story by Lana Robertson of the Linton Daily Citizen.

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Indiana
Lake, Porter, and LaPorte Counties

 

Kankakee River flows toward Illinois through Lake, Porter, and LaPorte Counties, Indiana

In the mid-1800’s, the Grand Kankakee Marsh was one of the most significant wetland ecosystems in North America, stretching for more than 1 million acres across northwestern Indiana. The Kankakee River meandered 250 miles through 2000 bends flowing westward from South Bend to the Indiana/Illinois state line, and had an average fall of only 5 inches per mile. The surrounding mosaic of wetlands of various types supported myriads of plant species and all types of wildlife.

Today, the Kankakee has been straightened to less than 85 miles, and it has been deepened and channeled in continuous efforts that turned the surrounding wetlands into farm land to raise row crops. It still takes elaborate drainage systems, including pumping stations to be able to lower water tables enough to raise crops. Even with that, wetness and frequent flooding were constant hazards for agricultural use on some of the land.

But something else is happening, too. Some of the land is being restored to wetland conditions. In 2002, for instance, the National Waterfowl Alliance put 120 acres along the Kankakee into the Wetlands Reserve Program. And, working with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, they have nearly completed the restoration work on the site in an effort to produce a microcosm of what the Grand Kankakee Marsh once was.

Macrotopographic (pothole) features were excavated in 2003 and the drainage pump was shut down. The existing high water table means water stays in the low spots year round now. Eleven acres of prairie species, warm season grasses and forbs, were seeded on some of the high ground. Still ahead are 51 acres of wet meadow species, 30 acres of trees and 2 acres of shrub plantings. All of the seedlings and plantings are native species and the varieties of habitats on the site are expected to attract amphibians, wading birds, furbearers and reptiles, much as were there in the mid-1800s. The Kankakee River flows by on the north side of the site that is quickly becoming an oasis for its inhabitants.
Your contact is Mike McGovern, NRCS public affairs specialist, at 317-290-3222 ext. 324, or mike.mcgovern@in.usda.gov.

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Kentucky
Butler County

NRCS engineers (from left) Mitch Shanklin, Eric Phillips, and Don Canary

NRCS is helping cope with the problem of dwindling wild life habitat resulting from development by building micro-topographical diversity. After NRCS engineering staff visited the Hines WRP site in Butler County, Kentucky, they started work with area biologist Ray Toor on a wetland restoration plan for the 320-acre site. With its shallow water areas, green tree reservoirs, inundated grasslands, and protruding islands that provide habitat and breeding grounds for a wide range of species, the site was ideal for enhancement of its natural micro-topographical diversity. With help from WRP, the engineers designed and completed six dikes to restore the wetlands, providing food, water, shelter, nesting and breeding areas, and migrational resting sites. The dikes, completed last fall, have contributed to successful micro-topographical diversity this spring with visible signs of increased wildlife.
Your contact is Lois Jackson, NRCS public affairs specialist, at 318-473-7768, or ljackson@ky.usda.gov.

 

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Louisiana
Gulf Coast
America's WETLAND is one of the largest and most productive expanses of coastal wetlands in North America. This valuable landscape extending along Louisiana's coast is disappearing at a rate of 25 square miles per year.

Louisiana wetlands

In the largest public awareness initiative in its history, Louisiana is leading America's WETLAND: Campaign to Save Coastal Louisiana. The campaign is raising awareness of the impact of Louisiana's wetland loss and increase support for efforts to conserve and save coastal Louisiana.  For more information visit the America's WETLAND website at http://www.americaswetland.com/.

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Minnesota
Glacial Ridge

NRCS engineering staff install an inlet on Glacial Ridge wetlands

NRCS along with 25 other public and private partners are cooperating in the 28,000 acre Glacial Ridge restoration project -- one of the Nation's largest wetland/tall grass prairie restoration projects -- located in Minnesota’s Northern Tall Grass Prairie Ecoregion.

NRCS’ Wetlands Reserve Program is the driving force for the project which began in August, 2000, when The Nature Conservancy (TNC) purchased 24,270 acres at the Glacial Ridge site 10 miles east of Crookston. TNC’s first enrollment of 4,300 acres is the largest WRP contract in Minnesota and the organization hopes to have approximately 11,700 acres enrolled into the NRCS Wetland Reserve Program by the fall of 2003.

Local contractors are restoring natural water levels and vegetation to drained wetlands on WRP land. Eventually 8,000 acres of wetlands will be re-created.

The technique used for restoring the wetland consists of contractors seeding the surrounding uplands with prairie grasses and wildflowers collected within 65 miles of Glacial Ridge.

Although restored prairies are usually far less diverse than natural ones, restoration connects the isolated wetlands remnants allowing interaction of plant and small animal populations thereby setting an entire ecosystem on the road to recovery.
Your contact is Julie MacSwain, NRCS public affairs specialist at 651-602-7859, or Julie.macswain@mn.usda/gov.

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Mississippi
Sharkey County

Jack Branning shows a part of his 3,500 acres of land in Sharkey County, which won for him the national conservation award

He calls himself a retired pencil salesman.

A Washington, D.C.-based group calls him an exemplary conservationist.

And if the geese and the ducks and the deer and the dove were talking, they’d call him a friend.

In May, Jack Branning traveled to Washington, D.C., to accept a National Wetlands Award, joining other winners in the Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Branning, who owned and operated Southern Office Supply in Vicksburg for many years, retired and moved to Eagle Lake several years ago.

In 1999, he also bought nearly 3,500 acres of land in Sharkey County where the False and the Little Sunflower rivers join and just east of the Delta National Forest. At the time, the land had been cleared for soybean production since the 1970s.

It had never operated very successfully in the production of soybeans because of nearly annual flooding from the two adjacent rivers, so he placed the land in a permanent trust that will allow it to revert to a bottomland hardwood forest for generations to come.

"Back in 1999, this farm was put into the Wetlands Reserve Program," he said.

Since then, with help and advice from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the entire 3,498 acres of land has been managed by Branning and Federal specialists as a wetlands habitat for the benefit of wildlife.

Branning, a "country boy" who grew up in French Camp, first worked in Vicksburg as an office supply salesman. He parlayed the pencil profits into ownership of the business and now, at 72, owns and manages business properties in Vicksburg, Jackson and elsewhere. But all that’s secondary these days, he said. "I don’t carry any keys because I don’t have to open up a store every day," he said, explaining how he could devote so much personal time to the preserve he calls Woods and Wildlife.

According to the nomination form filled out by Homer Wilkes, State conservationist with the Mississippi Natural Resources Conservation Service, Branning has restored 721 acres of seasonal wetlands and 30 acres of semi-permanent wetlands. He has also replanted much of the land area in bottomland species such as oak, cypress and persimmon; installed several control structures and two water wells; and put up 43 nesting boxes for wood ducks.

"What has been done up here has been sort of a corporate effort between me and NRCS," Branning said while lounging in Mallard Lodge, his getaway house on the property.

He said the Wetlands Reserve Program is just what it says. Woods and Wildlife is a wetland area that was taken out of farming and put into trees and water for migratory birds and wildlife.

An avid hunter and fisherman when time allowed, Branning said he entered conservation work as a "plaything," but it has become something else.

"It has become a passion," he said. "When the farm was enrolled in the WRP, I yawned and said that’s going to be good. That’s going to get this thing out of the farming business, and the price of beans was not very good, and this is a way to put this into hunting where I would like to see it anyway, a recreational opportunity for my family.

"The two guys who were working with me, Kevin Nelms (a biologist) and Bill Shepherd (an engineer), ... were assigned to this project to develop it according to how NRCS thinks a wetland program ought to look. They brought so much enthusiasm to it, that it just caught me on fire," Branning said.

Branning, first nominated for the Environmental Law Institute award in 2002, described the project on his land as having all elements in place. The next goal is to protect and maintain it so the project can become mature.

"Where effort needs to be put, we’ll put it to see to it that it grows old gracefully," he said.

Branning said even though the project is still in its youth, it is having an effect on the wildlife. The nomination said the biologist reported counting 51 species of birds using the wetland areas. Also, the food plots and additional cover are attracting deer from the nearby Delta National Forest and Sunflower Wildlife Management Area.

Ducks are important to Branning, and he’s seen mallards, hooded mergansers, shoveler, blue-winged and green-winged teal, gadwall and pintails using his restored wetlands.

"We were holding around 15,000 birds last year when hardly anybody had any birds at all," he said.

"This possibly could be one of the best programs the Federal government has come up with for landowners and the government," he said. "Marginal land that floods like this land does, crop insurance was collected fairly regularly, that’s a cost to the government. This land has been taken out of farm land, put back into what it was ... bottomland hardwood and will be that way forever."

Story by Fred Messina and image by Jon Giffin of the Vicksburg Post.
Your contact is Jeannine May, NRCS public affairs specialist, at 601-965-4337, or jeannine.may@ms.usda.gov.

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Missouri
Bootheel

Missouri landowners have restored 100,000 acres of wetlands through the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP).

From late fall to early spring, flooded bottomland hardwood timber is critical to the breeding success of the mallard duck

By the time the WRP started in 1992, Missouri had lost 87 percent of its original 4.8 million acres of wetlands. While some wetlands naturally disappear, most are lost when people drain them. Millions of Missouri's original wetland acres were drained to produce agricultural crops, especially in the Bootheel. More recently, however, the majority of wetland acres that are drained are used for development.

Through WRP, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has purchased 700 easements. In exchange for the easements, landowners receive cash payments for converting marginal-use land to shallow wetland areas and maintaining them.

"This is a major milestone for WRP and wetland restoration in Missouri," says State Conservationist Roger Hansen. "Our job isn't finished, but we are making good progress."

According to the 2002 National Resources Inventory (NRI), the United States gained about 26,000 acres of wetlands each year on agricultural land between 1997 and 2002. The total of those new agricultural wetlands and wetlands restored on other land is about equal to the 56,000 acres of wetlands that disappeared annually in the contiguous United States during the same period. Most wetland losses today occur when wetlands are drained to facilitate urban development.

Missouri's success with WRP is a major contributor to offsetting wetland losses caused by development and other land-use conversions. The 1997 NRI showed that Missouri had 897 thousand acres of wetlands. The release of State-level 2002 NRI data is pending. However, preliminary estimates suggest that Missouri had no net loss of wetlands between 1997 and 2002, and might have realized a small net gain.

Hansen attributes Missouri's success partly to Federal regulations that do not allow farmers to remain eligible for USDA programs if they drain wetlands to create more cropland. However, Hansen says it also is because more people recognize the value of wetlands.

Wetlands support diverse populations of fish, wildlife and plants. They protect water quality by filtering out pollutants. They provide natural flood control by absorbing or temporarily storing excess water, and they offer aesthetic and recreational opportunities.

Kevin Dacey, wetland biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), attributes Missouri's success to educational efforts and the cooperation of several agencies.

"We're making progress in wetlands restoration because of the combined efforts of private landowners, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Ducks Unlimited, the Missouri Department of Conservation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other State and Federal agencies," Dacey says.

Dacey says four wetland teams in Missouri have done a good job of educating private landowners about the benefits of wetlands. Each wetland team is comprised of an NRCS soil scientist and an MDC wetland biologist. The teams, located in NRCS offices, are the delivery system for WRP in Missouri. WRP contracts typically are awarded for frequently flooded cropland along major rivers and their tributaries. Wetlands created under WRP account for one-third of the wetlands in the Missouri River floodplain.

Dacey says Missouri uses the most innovative methods of restoring wetlands, including creating sloughs and oxbows in association with dry mounds to create diverse wetland wildlife habitat.

Missouri is also the first State to establish an agricultural wetland mitigation bank. The bank allows southeastern Missouri farmers the option of draining small wetlands in their fields and buying into the creation of a larger wetland complex. Missouri farmers also may mitigate wetlands by draining troublesome ones in their fields if they create wetlands of equal or better value elsewhere on their farms.

Hansen says this wetland mitigation approach has worked well in Missouri.

"The new wetlands that farmers are creating are higher quality wetlands than the ones they are draining," Hansen says.

Hansen says some wetlands benefits, such as positively impacting water quality and flood prevention, will become more obvious in the future because the benefits are cumulative and they will become more measurable as monitoring techniques improve.

For now, 100,000 acres is a measure that makes conservationists happy.

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Montana
Sheridan County

adult piping plover

Thanks to NRCS technical assistance and funding from the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP), Kent Throntveit, a landowner in Sheridan County, Montana, can boast the State's highest density of piping plovers, a threatened species, has been documented on his property. With the help of NRCS resource conservationist Tim Solberg, Throntveit has developed a rest rotation grazing system and wildlife habitat enhancement on 875 acres near Westby through the WHIP. His property is part of the glaciated Missouri hills, an area characterized by a dense mix of

Freshwater and alkali wetland on Kent Throntveit's (insert lower right) land near Sheridan, Montana

freshwater and alkali wetlands, ranging from temporary to semi-permanent in duration. The hills are well known for their high waterfowl production where grassland/wetland complexes remain intact. In fact, asked if he has a lot of hunters requesting permission to hunt on his property, Throntveit laughed and said, “I’ve gotten more requests from people who want to come out and look at piping plover.”
Your contact is Lori Valadez, NRCS public affairs specialist, at 406-587-6842, or lori.valadez@mt.usda.gov.

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Utah
Park City

Biologists, conservationists, and citizens pitch-in to release 5,000 spotted frog tadpoles into protective cages in marshy habitat of the Swaner preserve

Thanks to NRCS and the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP), Swaner Nature Preserve in Park City, Utah, will again see the Columbia spotted frog. The Swaner Nature Preserve was selected as the best reintroduction site because of its suitable habitat and the fact that spotted frogs were once found in the area. NRCS has been working with Swaner for several years and will use WRP to protect, restore, and enhance wetlands on the preserve. To help celebrate Wetlands Month in Utah, biologist, conservationists, and citizens recently gathered for the first reintroduction of Columbia spotted frogs in the U.S. Nearly 5,000 spotted frog tadpoles were released into protective cages within marshy habitat in the preserve’s wet meadow areas. Biologists are hoping 200 to 300 will survive to adulthood during the next two to three years.

Columbia spotted frog

Fifty years ago, the Columbia spotted frog was one of the most common amphibians along the Wasatch Front in Utah (they range as far south as Nevada). Factors such as loss of habitat, introduction of non-native species, poor water quality, and other factors associated with urban sprawl contributed to their decline. The Columbia spotted frog is listed as a species of concern on Utah’s Sensitive Species list.
Your contact is Ron Francis, NRCS public affairs specialist, at 801-524-4557, or ronald francis@ut.usda.gov.

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NRCS Wetlands Exhibit

click to enlarge image

Reserve the NRCS Wetlands Exhibit for display at events during American Wetland Month – May 2004. NRCS employees may reserve the 10-ft. X 10-ft., free-standing, Nomadic exhibit (shown left) through the Conservation Communications Staff (CCS) in Fort Worth, TX. CCS generally covers outbound FedEx shipping charges; the requestor is responsible for funding return shipping. To reserve an exhibit, send an email to Exhibit Inquiry, Conservation Communications Staff, 817-509-3555, including the exhibit title and the dates requested.  Information on other NRCS exhibits can be found at http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/feature/exhibits/index.html.

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