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Have you ever seen a muskrat, a beaver, a Swamp Sparrow, or a Marsh Wren?
If you haven't then you probably aren't living near any wetlands, which are very important to these animals and many others. Wetlands also provide a very important filtration system for our water. Without wetlands our worlds would be a different place.

Wetlands act like giant sponges, soaking up rain and snowmelt and slowly releasing water in drier seasons. Wetlands help to reduce floods and to ease the worst effects of drought. Draining ponds, sloughs, and marshes often lowers the water and dries up wells. Wetlands also reduce soil erosion by checking or slowing the runoff from storms and thaws. Without wetlands we would no longer have a ready supply of fresh drinking water. Wetlands filter the waters of our lakes, rivers, and streams, reducing pollution. Wetlands filter sediments and nutrients from storm water for periods greater than 10 days. Particles drop out and sink to the bottom, and nutrients are taken up by the roots of water plants and reeds.

Wetlands are also the homes for at least some part of the year for many fish, birds, and other animals, meeting essential breeding, nesting, nursery, and feeding needs. Without wetlands, some wildlife species would disappear. Wetlands are the whole world for many salamanders, snakes, turtles, and aquatic insects. On the other hand, many of our frogs, toads, and tree frogs breed in temporary ponds and marshes, but spend much of their adult life on the surrounding dry land. Fish, such as stickleback and pike, come to marshes to spawn and feed in the shallow waters. Among the smaller mammals living around the marsh are shrews, lemmings, voles, muskrats, and beavers.

But wetlands are especially a boon for birds. More than 100 species inhabit or make uses of marshes, swamps, and sloughs. Some, like the Swamp Sparrow and Marsh Wren, nest there almost all the time. Many millions of ducks, geese, gulls, and other waterfowl also nest, breed, and feed there along with numerous waders and shorebirds-herons, bitterns, rails, and sandpipers. Kingfishers, owls, Ospreys, and other predators feed in wetlands. Birds such as Mallards and teals use wetlands while molting because marshy areas provide excellent escape cover. Sandhill Cranes, geese, and Tundra Swans stop over in marshes during migration, to rest and feed and to regain their strength.

However, for all the good wetlands do, they are still being destroyed. The natural, reversible changes in wetlands may be almost insignificant compared with the disruption caused by human interference. Dredging a pond can make it unsuitable for birds that require shallow water. Draining or filling in wetlands penitently destroys entire communities of plants and wildlife. Burning off or cutting down surrounding weeds, brush, or other vegetation eliminates, at least temporarily, vital nesting places and escape cover. Building a highway through a coastal marsh or erecting a small dock at the marshy edge of a lake where you moor your rowboat is also damaging. Air and water pollution are serious problems. Insecticides, weed killers, and industrial wastes take a heavy toll on plants, fish, and other wildlife.

This destruction is happening all across the country, as industry, commerce, agriculture, and our appetite for "the good life" continue to swallow up our wetlands. Naturalists, ecologists, and many other people are concerned about this trend. And millions more are realizing that this kind of "progress" threatens our world with impoverishment. Could we enjoy the truly good life in a land without wild places and without wildlife?

 

Door County Environmental Council
P O Box 114, Fish Creek WI 54212
Phone: 920-743-6003 | FAX: 920-743-6727
Info@dcec-wi.org