Wetlands, Waterfowl and Wandering Wilbos: Save All Three

Dear Pal in Portland;

I am thinking about your political analysis. It's good that you are involved in the environmental scene, keeping tabs on the laws and the players and their plays. I drove in from Waldport on the Pacific along the Alsea River, and I was shocked by clear cuts when I drew closer to Corvallis. It reminds me of Thunder Mountain, a sand-dune mountain that was once one of the highest points in Michigan. It's just north of Benton Harbor on the state road that hugs the Lake Michigan coast.

Thunder Mountain is found in Bridgman too, visible from Red Arrow Highway close to the nuclear power plant. Maybe you noticed the gorgeous sandpiles under the sandpipes, piled up like so much harvested grain. That's the Technisand processing plant. A mining company has rights, mineral rights I think, to most of the dunes between Benton Harbor and South Haven, and dispite the signs declaring a "critical dunes environment", some official status, Technisand is hauling away a good portion on Thunder Mountain. There's agreements on how the mining should be done, but even overhead pictures of violations can't stop the extraction process. The sand is perfect for a certain process, and I have read each grain is coated in sand.

A group trying to save the mountain have documented an increase in temperature for a trout stream that runs on Thunder Mountain's south side, and the increase in temperature has lessened the trout population. The flow of the creek is lessened too. The State Department of Resources doesn't hold the data collected by the group in high regard, and there's no accepted baseline on the stream's measurements. The idea of compensation for lost use of foresting, development and mining rights has won in Michigan courts a few times; it's enough to buy a wetland and draw up blueprints to seed a compensation lawsuit. It's as if the developers put these plans on the books just to have a chance at compensation damages when their plans are denied. Thank goodness ambitious ecology groups are raising money to buy these rights, or soliciting the donation of these rights, before too much damage is done. Huge amounts of land near Holland, Michigan are banked up forever in landbanks. In wills, landowners are including these rights as gifts to landbanks

I've seen some nifty stuff. In Indiana, the Feds bought thousands of acres of farmland in an area south of Fort Wayne. The plan is to restore the ancient swamp called the Limberlost. Yes, Limber got lost in the Limberlost. I guess he wasn't limber enough. Not too long ago, the Feds flooded the farmland and dormant seeds began to sprout. It's a good fact that many duck hunters are Republican. Many riverflood plains are slated to be purchased and allowed to flood after years of serving as fields for grain. The Illinois River around Peoria is a good example of this wetland recovery. It's a good fact that many Kayakers are politically active and spend money in pursuit of their sport. Peoria is becoming a Kayaking hotspot. I guess canoeing is to kayaking what joyriding in a car is to expeditions on a Harley. The current fuss about the farm bill has a good environmental story. A strong sector of people want to wrest farm subsidies away from multinationals and target that money to environmental projects, and I'm betting wetland reclamation is a pet line item. As I write this, I am reading about the faltering effort to reclaim southern Florida land for Everglades restoration. I've seen some interesting clear cuts of cypresses on the western edge of Miami; those cypress roots require bulldozing. Maybe some land is too economically valuable to be saved.

Now I'm not trying to calm you. It's better to keep the aboriginal forest if possible. It's worth fighting for, by legal means of course. I'm not advocating anyone signing up with Edward Abbey and the Earth First vanguard, the no-compromise squad. Down in Norfolk, there's a former timberland that George Washington started to harvest. George surely slept there; he also hired very cheap labor to dig a drain ditch there too. I actually went to see Washington's Ditch, but no one was selling tee shirts. The lumbering concern cut over the land at least once, and then donated it to the government, who now manages it as the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. It's still pretty swampy, with a lake like Lake Okeechobee, the Everglades, in the center. It isn't accessible by car so the balance of the Lake Drummond is preserved. The Nature Conservancy was granted ownership to about 160,000 acres of Adirondack forest, with a catch. The granting lumber concern has an authorization to harvest pulpwood, a set amount for a set number of years. In the end, it'll be closed to development, for the most part.

I've thought and read about the subject. I even visited the farm of a man who worked out the migratory flyways, where all the swamp reclamation projects are going forward. Jack Miner's farm is now an Ontario park, a short hour drive from my house in Royal Oak. Miner made his living leading hunting expeditions in the Canadian wilderness, and one day he noticed a fact that changed his life. The geese knew better than land close to him. So he bought a farm on the north shore of Lake Erie, dug a wading pond and planted corn. I'll have to consult the legend, but two or three years past before migratory geese and ducks began landing in his pond. Miner started to band the birds, and he used stickpins to record reports from people who read the tags. Probably after shooting the birds. People from Kingsville now drive there at sundown to see the geese descending down, down, down on extended wings. The preserve isn't open on Sundays, though. A posted sign recommends church attendance instead.

Save the Wilbos !