Restoring, enhancing, creating Great Lakes wetlands

Planting a buffer strip

It’s an early sunny morning in hot summer. There has been no rain for weeks and a severe drought is in progress. Soil that was tilled and planted is now baked hard. No shade relief can be found along the edges of fields with hedge rows eliminated to make more land for growing. Tile drains continuing to drizzle the remnants of muddy water into a roadside ditch. Storm clouds all too readily appear on the horizon, the wind rises blowing the dust around and suddenly there is a clap of thunder. A heavy rain storm pours onto the thirsty soil.

Before it can seep into the fields and nurture the drying crops, it runs off leaving long ruts in the ground and carrying any recent fertilizer laid down by the farmer. The drainage ditch is briefly full, then empty as the water races into nearby stream and river beds, filling them with topsoil, silt and the pollution from the fertilizer.

That is an extreme picture, but one that farmers in Ontario are beginning to see all too often. We (Joe and Josephine Public) haven’t understood until recently, that removing the woodlots and swampy areas in a field to get more growing land and thus more produce, has meant that we have given up the natural method of storing water where it’s needed for agriculture and cleaning water that goes into our drinking water system. This water is also needed by our vanishing species in their natural environment.

Restoring wetlands, enhancing existing ones, even creating new ones has become a major priority for biologists who are trying to find ways to bring resilience back to the land and to restore the quantity and quality of the water in Ontario’s Great Lakes.

Steve Bowers explains. “When our river and stream banks erode with heavy rainfall, the silt-clogged waters spill into one or other of Ontario’s Great Lakes along with all the nutrients. Algae blooms and heavily silted lake beds inhibit fish spawning. Water becomes unpleasant to swim in, or boat on, and impossible to drink. Animal, insect and plant life suffer for lack of healthy areas to procreate and survive.”

Our Great Lakes are the wells from which many Canadian and American cities draw their drinking water.

Polluted, silted water requires much more cleaning to be drinkable than the pristine waters of 200 years ago. Economically, we humans have made a bit of a mess – unknowingly perhaps, but a mess nonetheless.

What to do?

There’s a section within the Ministry of Natural Resources’ (MNR) that is in charge of our Great Lakes coastal wetlands under the Canada-Ontario Agreement Respecting the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem (COA). These people do just that – they are masters of restoration. Dozens of men and women from a variety of departments are at work restoring wetlands alongside many partner organizations and individuals.

Farmers are partners

Even more exciting for everyone interested in the environment (as well as for those just interested in having clean drinking water): they are also creating new wetlands. Two fascinating examples of these remarkable creation and restoration projects are happening in southern Ontario.

The Rondeau Project is taking place in the Rondeau Basin in Lake Erie. There, following a three-year evaluation by wetlands ecologist Dr. Janice Gilbert, landowners are allowing and in some cases getting down and dirty, actually working side by side with COA staff, helping to construct silting and holding ponds. Then they all build wetlands around these ponds

The other project - Huron County Stream-Wetland Restoration Project – is equally interesting and is underway along the Ontario coast of Lake Huron. It also involves landowners who are taking part either by allowing or by helping with the dirty work. But whatever they’re doing, all are enthusiastic.

Steve Bowers

Steve Bowers – the Ministry’s Stewardship Coordinator for Huron County – says, “More effective land and water stewardship practices have been well received by many local farmers. Its taken imagination and creativity to come up with simple solutions. So now we have more than 70,000 native trees and shrubs planted so far. They help stop erosion and create buffers beside creeks and wetlands. They also help shade and cool the water and improve water quality for fish and other aquatic creatures so necessary to preserving our biodiversity.”

“Some of our projects have also included restoring wetlands and fencing off creeks, springs, small rivers as well as swamps and marshes so that livestock – like cattle, sheep, even horses and pigs, won’t get into these sensitive areas and destroy or pollute them.”

Simple solutions to big problems. All based on the fact that wetlands act as nature’s filtration and cleansing system. That they create habitat for rare and endangered plant and animal species is also an advantage, because without the environment necessary for them to survive, they are all too quickly vanishing from our world. There are other solutions as well, ideas that you might find interesting and could use in your own backyard. Some things to think about.