In this photo taken Wednesday, June 19, 2019, Craig Larson walks past a restored wetland project on his land near McClusky, N.D. Larson with help from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is restoring wetlands on several properties he owns in the state's North Dakota's prairie pothole region. "I'm raising my hand on everything I own. I believe in it," says Larson, president of a Bismarck bank. "If you're looking to see an overnight change you're going to be disappointed. You have to see what's going to happen in five years, 10 years."
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Charlie Riedel / AP Photo
In this photo taken Wednesday, June 19, 2019, Craig Larson walks past a restored wetland project on his land near McClusky, N.D. Larson with help from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is restoring wetlands on several properties he owns in the state's North Dakota's prairie pothole region. "I'm raising my hand on everything I own. I believe in it," says Larson, president of a Bismarck bank. "If you're looking to see an overnight change you're going to be disappointed. You have to see what's going to happen in five years, 10 years."
Around the world, efforts are being made to reclaim wetlands that have been filled in to plant crops.
A team of researchers, farmers and conservationists recently dug into barley and wheat fields in eastern England in search of lost ponds lurking beneath. Using chain saws and an excavator, it took just a few hours to resurrect a dying pond near Hindolveston, a thousand-year-old village not far from the North Sea.
“When we restore ponds, we bring water back into the landscape,” says Carl Sayer of University College London.
Almost 90 percent of the world’s wetlands disappeared over the past three centuries, with the losses rapidly accelerating since the 1970s. Their disappearance can trigger environmental woes including rising floods and species threatened with extinction. Climate change also threatens to worsen the problem.
After ghost ponds are dug out, seeds from long-buried water plants come to life. So do the insects that depend on them, followed by fish and birds that eat the insects.
“And if we see lots of different things living, it means there’s lots of different habitats for them to live in, lots of different homes. And that means that we have created and restored a very good, healthy pond,” says Helen Greaves, a researcher at University College London.
In North America, several million prairie potholes – natural wetlands created by glaciers — are spread across a region that covers portions of five U.S. states and three Canadian provinces. One by one, they’re being drained or plowed under to make way for crops.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent trying to reverse or at least halt the losses including payments to ranchers. But some government biologists and wetlands advocates say such projects don’t fully restore what’s lost.
Each spring and fall bring an even greater influx of waterfowl: clouds of migrating snow geese that descend en masse, lingering for a few days on the larger water bodies as they pass between breeding grounds in Canada and their winter refuges to the south.
But to farmers, these wetlands carved into the earth by glaciers some 10,000 years ago can be an adversary. The muddy holes bog down tractors and rot newly planted seeds and they can kill young crops, leaving patches of lifeless stalks.
“Farmers and ranchers don’t want to destroy wetlands,” says Daryl Lies of the North Dakota Farm Bureau. “But having an ability to mitigate them, very reasonable priced and easily, would help.”
Rancher Jerry Doan, who has restored some wetlands on his property, believes there’s a middle ground.
It’s “a balance of protecting wildlife, having habitat, and then finding ways for us to be profitable in agriculture — that’s all important,” says Doan.
This Associated Press series was produced in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
