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![NRCS This Week mast head](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090111095805im_/http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/news/thisweek/images/mastheaddshadow3.jpg)
NRCS Helps Kentucky Farmer Save Wetlands
![Beaver Creek Wetlands Menifee County, Kentucky](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090111095805im_/http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/news/thisweek/images/beavercreek.jpg)
Beaver Creek Wetlands Menifee County, Kentucky |
For decades in this country, bogs, swamps and other wetlands were something
to be eradicated; now the government is spending millions of dollars a year to
put back what many worked so hard to destroy.
Deep in the rural heart of south-central Kentucky near the Butler-Logan county
line, there are 125 acres on Mud River now dedicated to wildlife and
preservation of that wetland environment.
As local recognition of Earth Day, several
Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife
officials, and local members of a national environmental group,
The Nature Conservancy, joined officials
with the Natural Resource Conservation
Service to show off their teamwork in producing a restored wetland on the
farm of Paul Hines.
The NRCS’s
Wetlands Reserve Program purchased a permanent easement on the property,
which the government paid Hines for, before flooding all of his bottom land. The
amount paid for the easement was not readily available.
“We built a dike along the tree line to hold flood waters on the land,” said
Jacob Kuhn, the assistant state conservationist for the NRCS. “We want to hold
water on the property longer, not permanently.”
He said the dike plugs up the drainage ditches that were constructed years ago
to run water off the property. Uneven lower areas were created to provide a
range of water depths for the needs of different wildlife as well as two islands
for safe nesting space for the birds.
He said all this work is needed not only to counter the years of farming on the
land, but also to make up for the 27 flood-control structures and 22 miles of
dredging and channeling the USDA did years ago on the Mud River in support of
bottomland farming.
Birds and deer are not the only ones to benefit from the created wetland.
“There are a multitude of benefits,” said David Sawyer, state conservationist
for the NRCS. “One of the biggest is the improvement in water quality. They also
act as buffers to reduce the effects of floods, and of course there are the
benefits to wildlife.”
The water held in the wetlands also is more likely to sink into the soil and
recharge the water table, said Forest Taylor, the chairman of the Logan County
Conservation Board.
Taylor said he has been part of the conservation board since 1965 and has seen
many improvement to farming practices in those years.
The program spends about $250 million a year developing wetlands across the
country, Sawyer said, and has paid over $14 million to Kentuckians for the right
to make their property into wetlands.
About 40 percent of the land in this project was replanted in native bottomland
hardwoods, especially oaks, to provide acorns as a food source for wildlife and
to preserve those native trees in the State, Kuhn said.
Members of The Nature Conservancy added a number of nesting boxes for bats on
the property. They are for the Indiana bat, a threatened species, which
traditionally nested in the now scarce shag-bark hickory trees that were common
in the area.
In the past, Kentucky had dwindling wetlands, said Russ Kennedy of the Kentucky
Department of Fish and Wildlife. He explained, though, that with the cooperation
of State and Federal agencies and the willingness of landowners in the State,
that has turned around.
He said the project on the Hines farm was an excellent example of that
cooperation.
“I want to see more of this,” said Elizabeth Ciusio, water bird specialist for
the State. “I’m very excited about this project.”
Sawyer also said carbon sequestration is another consideration in the move to
create more fallow farmland around the nation. He explained that the carbon from
industrial sources is taken up by plants and stored in the soil.
When that soil is left undisturbed that carbon is locked away, but when the soil
is tilled the carbon is released. Being a greenhouse gas constituent, carbon
could be a traded commodity between rural landowners and industrial businesses
in the future.
Hines said he went for the program in large part because of his wife.
“She likes the birds,” he said. “We come up here on the weekends just to enjoy
the wildlife.”
Story by Greg Wells, Bowling Green Daily
News.
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