From Wasteland to Treasure: Nahant Marsh Marks 15 Years as a Nature Preserve
Even a brief visit to Davenport’s Nahant Marsh will show something unusual: a wetland habitat nestled in an area that includes an interstate highway, a railroad, and various agricultural and industrial uses. You’ll likely see plants and animals that you won’t find anywhere else in the Quad Cities area, just a few minutes’ drive from the Rockingham Road exit of Interstate 280 in the southwestern part of the city.
“We know it’s the largest urban wetland between St. Paul and St. Louis” along the Mississippi River, said Executive Director Brian Ritter. “We think it’s one of the largest urban wetlands in the United States.”
In an e-mail, he said that “I really like the beaver complex in the northern part of Nahant proper. … I never cease to be amazed at how beavers have created a substantial pond on ground that has almost no flow of water. I am very curious to see how this pond will be colonized and used by plants and other animals, as well. This seems to me to be an example of how nature works … largely outside of human influence. …
“There are also other fish-free shallow-water excavations that hopefully will become areas that hold and nurture a variety of amphibians, including newts and salamanders. The number of little critters that can be found in the marsh proper is really amazing. … There are almost always some ducks, geese, herons, or other waterfowl using the marsh. To see a muskrat, beaver, or otter takes quite a bit more luck … .”
This is a great article about a recovered wetland in Iowa celebrating it’s 15 years. Getting read of trash, industry and the lead poisoning from the rod and gun club. It does a beautiful job explaining how many wetlands were lost in the last hundred years and why they are a valuable asset and not just a “wasteland” as farmers and developers once thought. You should really read the whole thing, but obviously if my favorite paragraph was allowed to exist in every city then we would have a lot more wetlands to boast about.
I’m a little too disoriented to write much at the moment. Because after squeaking uneasily by on wordpress 3.6 since 2010 I suddenly woke up t0 a website that functions very very differently at top of the line 4-3. Looks very different on my end. It is a brave new world and totally awkward. I thought Scott decided to start right away-but I have since learned that he didn’t. This is a wordpress generated assault to modernize me. Hopefully we can catch on and stabilize things.
Thank you to Cheryl who bravely traveled to the poster session at the Sportsman club in Martinez for the Fall Forum of the Fish and Wildlife Commission of Contra Costa County. The invited us to show the activity their grant paid for and she kindly accepted the job. I put this poster together to show what we did. Apparently there were lots of folks she knew there already.
Ooh new toy! Horizontal line button. I’ll be playing with that.
Things are very weird here in new website land. I had to go someone very scary to get the font black again. And to make a link. Whew. Dangerous in there.
Now it’s time for an update on our stupid beaver management files from Minnesota. I would give you the title in a title font but weird things are making it impossible at the moment. Here’s the gist:
Maintaining the county’s ditches, one by one
The board will make its final approval of the contract at the Sept. 22 meeting. The contract is with the United States Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) from Grand Rapids, which has already inspected a 4-mile stretch of CD 37 to remove approximately 40 beaver dams by hand and/or explosives and to remove all resident beaver for a 30-day period.
Because there’s no better way to spend taxpayer money than by blowing up beaver dams. Whoohoo!
