Latest Wetlands Stories

By CAROLE HAWKINS A northern McIntosh County developer cited last year for bush- hogging marshes and filling wetlands has signed off on a final agreement to reverse the damage. Owners Anthony Silva and Joseph Soares of Waterfront Paradise LLC agreed to pay a $40,000 fine to the Department of Natural Resources' Coastal Resources Division and to restore the site's damaged marsh and tidal areas. Last month, Waterfront Paradise said it would pay a $30,000 fine to DNR's Environmental Protection...

By Nick Ferraro, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn. Jun. 26--A welcome surprise jumped out at Dave Haak as he sat near the shoreline at Lily Lake one sunny afternoon late last week -- and it wasn't a giant sunfish. 'The water looks clearer, a bit cleaner than it was last year,' said Haak, 72, who took his two young grandkids to the Stillwater lake to fish and swim for the first time this year. Thanks to the later-than-normal ice-out and cool spring temperatures, summer enthusiasts eager to...

The water level of the Dalai Lake, the largest fresh water lake in northern China, has fallen about 3 meters since 2002, while its area has contracted by more than 500 square kilometers, said local authorities. "If the lake continues to shrink, it may soon disappear," said Liu Songtao, deputy director of the Dalai Lake National Nature Reserve administration, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Dalai Lake, also known as Hulun Lake, once covered 2,339 sq km with a water volume of...

By SCOTT HARPER By Scott Harper The Virginian-Pilot virginia beach Once upon a time, Lake Tecumseh and Back Bay were separate bodies of water in southern Virginia Beach, with thick, woody swamps between the two. Then, Ash ville Bridge Creek was created as a drainage ditch and navigational channel. And then, decades later, a small offshoot canal was dug - officials are not sure by whom or when - that today connects Lake Tecumseh with the sprawling Back Bay system. While boating and...

By Wade Rawlins, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C. Jun. 21--The fire in Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern North Carolina has burned more intensely and spread more widely because of changes to the land in earlier decades to promote farming. Much of the swampy land blackened by the Evans Road fire is crosshatched with ditches and canals that lower the water level and make the ground suitable for growing crops. The drainage ditches also allow the carbon-rich peat soil to dry...

By Susan Kuczka, Chicago Tribune Jun. 18--Fox Waterway Agency workers temporarily staked three massive floating bogs to the Grass Lake shoreline Tuesday, preventing a potentially dangerous backup of floodwater from the Fox River. The bogs had broken off from the Chain O' Lakes State Park and Conservation Area. "The thing is huge," said Ingrid Ruttendjie, the agency's executive director, after taking a boat tour of the land mass that had plugged the channel connecting Glass Lake...

Despite the vital role wetlands play in society, they remain among the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. To emphasise the direct and positive effects of healthy wetlands for humans, the theme of this year's World Wetlands Day, held every year on 2 February, is "˜Healthy Wetlands, Healthy People'.According to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the poor management of wetlands claims the lives of more than 3 million people every year and brings suffering to many more. Because wetlands are...

By Gena Kittner, The Wisconsin State Journal Aug. 12--TOWN OF BLUE MOUNDS -- A popular fishing spot and swimming hole for nearly a century, Stewart Lake has morphed into an algae and silt fraught body of water. But a siphon drawing down the seven-acre lake near Mount Horeb in southwestern Dane County is an important step, county officials say, to returning this popular destination to its original glory. "With the amount of algae and weed growth, it 's hard to recreate, " said Pete Jopke,...

By CHARLIE DIMMOCK WHEN I worked in a water garden centre, customers were forever asking me: 'I've got this creature in my pond what is it?' Well, lots of things live in ponds, I had to tell them. I've found many weird and wonderful creatures in ponds over the years, including believe it or not an eel. They can travel quite a long way over land between one stretch of water and another. In one customer's pond, I came across a couple of stone loaches, which are river fish, so how they got there...

Wetlands play a vital role in society, yet they remain among the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. In an effort to preserve wetlands, ESA began the GlobWetland project in 2003 to address these threats using satellite imagery. Three years later, the wetland and scientific communities are reviewing the role of Earth observation technologies in wetland preservation. Over one hundred wetland and Earth observation (EO) experts from around the world gathered at ESA's "˜GlobWetland Symposium:...