Nature Conservancy Accomplishes Largest Wetlands Restoration Project in Chapter History

Hydrology, aquatic communities and soil nutrient levels of coastal plain ponds to be monitored through 2007

BETHESDA, Maryland—July 27, 2005—The Nature Conservancy has restored more than two dozen seasonal wetlands and one large “Delmarva bay” on 330 acres of former farm fields in Caroline County at its Jackson Lane Preserve. The project, which began in 2003, is the largest wetlands restoration effort undertaken by The Nature Conservancy in Maryland/DC.

“People have built wetlands before, but they usually leave once they are completed and without monitoring the ecological success of the wetlands,” said Douglas A. Samson, senior scientist for The Nature Conservancy in Maryland/DC. “With a team of researchers and scientists, the Jackson Lane project may well be one of the best-studied wetlands restoration projects on Delmarva and in the region.”

The Jackson Lane wetlands restoration project also serves as one of the chapter’s most significant partnerships to date. The Nontidal Wetlands & Waterways Division of the Maryland Department of the Environment is providing significant funding and support.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Wildlife Program and the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service provide project design and oversight services. The Natural Resources Conservation Service also provided funding through a Wetland Reserve Program easement.

“Using money set aside from a farm lease and with support from two private foundations, we were able to recruit academic researchers to initiate a series of scientific studies of the restoration site,” Samson said. About a dozen researchers and scientists are monitoring water quality, soil chemistry, birds, wetland vegetation, dragonflies and damselflies, and amphibians and reptiles.
With a three-year grant from the Agro-Ecology Institute, University of Maryland researchers will be able to monitor the water quality, aquatic communities and track soil nutrient levels through 2007.

Researchers have documented more than 50 species of dragonflies and damselflies on the site, more than 70 bird species and almost 30 species of amphibians and reptiles.

The Nature Conservancy purchased 330 acres of farm fields in northern Caroline County in 1999, adjacent to the existing 300-acre Jackson Lane Preserve. The preserve is a 300-acre forested natural area that protects almost a dozen “Delmarva bays,” seasonally flooded depressional wetlands also known as coastal plain ponds. Once found in abundance across a large area of the Central Delmarva Peninsula, Delmarva bays are thought to have originated as wind-blown features at the end of the last ice age. The hydrology and chemistry of Delmarva bays is intricately and dynamically linked to local groundwater systems.

The restoration involved constructing more than two dozen earthen ditch plugs or berms, using soil excavated immediately adjacent to the berms to create 23 wetland ponds, ranging in depth from less than a foot to about four feet and in size from about a half-acre to roughly 10 acres. Other restoration techniques included: creating pit-and-mound microtopography by using a backhoe to scoop out one bucket of soil and place it adjacent to the hole; placing woody debris in and around the edge of the ponds to create habitat for wildlife; and planting potted native tree saplings and shrubs.

“By restoring these seasonal wetlands and large Delmarva bay adjacent to a site with existing and undisturbed coastal plain ponds, we will have a good scientific control for determining how well these wetland features will fair over the coming years,” Samson said.

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The Nature Conservancy is a leading international, nonprofit organization that preserves plants, animals and natural communities representing the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. To date, the Conservancy and its nearly one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 14 million acres in the United States—including more than 60,000 acres in Maryland—and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit us on the Web at nature.org/maryland.