Aldo Leopold's Spirit Lives On
in Habitat Restoration Projects

by Philip Bourjaily

"The first rule of intelligent tinkering," wrote Aldo Leopold, warning against the destruction of natural ecosystems "is to save all the parts."

Since so much of America has been converted to agricultural use in the past, following Leopold's caution to "save the parts" today often requires us to undo the work of previous generations: to replant plowed prairies, to reforest cleared woodlots, and to restore drained wetlands.

An appropriate case in point is the recently restored 927-acre Aldo Leopold Wetland Complex near Readlyn, a project recently begun as a joint effort among the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, and the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation.

Leopold conducted game surveys in the area in 1932, noting in his report that the flooded oxbows and scours in the Wapsipinicon River bottoms held excellent populations of fish and wildlife, and that he had spotted a rare flock of prairie chickens in the native grasses nearby.

But until recently, the row-cropped area bore little resemblance to the riverbottom/prairie complex Leopold saw in the 1930s. The marshes along the river had long since been tiled, ditched, and drained to make room for corn. Recent efforts, however, promise to, as DNR Wildlife Bureau Chief Richard Bishop states it, "put as much of the area back under water as is feasible."

Restoring a monocultural cropfield to a wetland rich in bio-diversity might seem at first to be an overwhelming task. Remarkably enough, it's as simple as merely adding water. As the existing crop leases on the area expire, engineers move in to plug ditches, build dikes, and block tile lines until the drained basins hold water again.

Then, nature finishes the job. The seeds of wetland plant communities, for instance, can survive dormant under cropfields for decades in so-called seed banks. Once the water returns, many of the original plants will grow back as if they'd never missed a season. Other seeds will arrive, floating on the wind, or clinging to the fur of animals. As for the raccoons, turtles, frogs, ducks, blackbirds, muskrats, and herons: if you build it, to borrow a phrase, they will come, on their own and in a hurry. After a few years the Wapsi bottoms may again look exactly as Aldo Leopold might have remembered them.

The Leopold Complex is just one of a number of wetland restorations in progress across my home state of Iowa, and the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation will continue to play an important role in locating and acquiring restorable areas.

Bruce Mountain, Wetlands for Iowa coordinator, describes the foundation's role in projects like the Leopold Complex: "National groups like DU, Pheasants Forever, and others have neither the personnel nor the mandate to make or locate deals. We can act quickly to buy a piece of property and hang on to it until the DNR and private groups can hold banquets, write grant proposals, apply for habitat stamp monies, and so on."

Mountain cites a recent example of how the Foundation's timely action facilitated a wetlands restoration project in southern Iowa. A county engineer discovered that, by moving the bed of a proposed road a few hundred yards, he could in effect build a dam that would back up two hundred acres of water in a drained wetland basin. The county couldn't buy the affected land right away, but they needed to build the road, so the conservation board contacted INHF to buy the land and hold the title.

It was the Natural Heritage Foundation, in fact, that first purchased the buyer's contract to the land that now comprises the Leopold Complex. The foundation, along with the DNR, Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, and private donors then raised the money needed to buy the land.

In his 1933 book Game Management, Aldo Leopold wrote: "Game can be restored by the creative use of the same tools which have heretofore destroyed it--axe, plow, cow, fire, and gun." By the same token, there's nothing new about the technology used in wetland restoration--any heavy-equipment operator will tell you that a bulldozer can turn a cornfield back into a marsh as easily as it turned the marsh into a cornfield.

All that's really needed to restore a wetland is the belief that sometimes the intangible value of a marsh matters more than the profit from a few more bushels of corn. Aldo Leopold devoted his life to fostering that understanding, and the restored wetland near Readlyn will stand as a fitting tribute to his teachings.


Copyright (c) 1996 Philip Bourjaily. All rights reserved.

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