Red Cedar Wetlands

From Great Lakes Wiki

By Claire Cummings

Growing up in metro-Detroit’s Rouge River watershed, David Mifsud was curious about what lived beneath the waters of the highly urbanized waterway.

For his master’s thesis in 2004, he found out.

“This isn’t a wasteland. This isn’t a dead area,” said Mifsud, now the wetlands stewardship program coordinator for Friends of the Rouge, a nonprofit group that helps clean up the river.

The Rouge has been victimized by decades of heavy use. Roughly 1.5 million people live in the area it drains. Only 25 percent of that land is undeveloped.

But Mifsud found that even a river with little open space left on its banks can support a variety of plants and animals. He found 13 species of reptiles and amphibians in some of the Rouges’ larger wetlands.

Contents 1 Pavement Versus Wetlands 2 Flood control 3 Creating working wetlands 4 Related Links

Pavement Versus Wetlands

If the Rouge can support life, what does that mean for the wetland habitat along the Red Cedar?

A handful of turtles live near the river on the campus of Michigan State University, said Jim Harding, a natural science conservation information specialist at MSU’s Museum.

But it’s difficult to say whether there’s habitat in that stretch to reproduce — or if they should even live in such an urban environment, he said. Many slopes are paved with concrete to prevent erosion.

“The way the campus is set up ... it’s never going to be an amphibian or reptile paradise,” Harding said. “They can’t leave the river and go very far without getting run over.”

There are ways, however, for urban sprawl and wildlife to coexist, Mifsud said.

“It’s the education about what people can do on an individual basis as well as a collective basis for protecting it,” he said.

Less urbanized areas do exist along the river in places like Livingston County where the Red Cedar zigs and zags through the countryside. There’s an expectation among suburbanites who move to Livingston from Detroit that there will be wide open land, said Ken Recker, the county’s chief deputy drain commissioner. But there’s not an understanding of what agricultural drainage is and how it affects wetlands.

Flood control

Recker’s office is charged with keeping an eye on drainage near wetlands, but there aren’t the legal or financial tools to keep up in-depth monitoring of vegetation and habitat. The county has an interest in preserving wetlands because if you fill a wetland, that water has to go somewhere and that has a negative impact on somebody, he said.

Michigan regulates wetlands greater than 5 acres; local governments can control the smaller ones. But local ordinances aren’t widely practiced and are mostly used by suburban communities in response to growth. Even with more than 2,000 acres of wetlands covering the city, East Lansing just adopted a wetland’s ordinance last year. Nearby Lansing, Michigan’s capital, still has no regulation.

Much of that has to do with the lack of land left to develop, leaders say. Even smaller communities along the Red Cedar, such as Williamston, have already seen extensive growth and have no need for wetland regulation, said Lynn Wilson, Williamston’s planning director. Instead, the city has a green belt conservation district option in its zoning ordinance that provides additional protection land near the river. It is not as extensive as a standing wetlands ordinance.

President George W. Bush set a goal on Earth Day in 2004 to restore, improve and protect at least 3 million acres of wetlands during the next five years. But the success of restoration is uneven at best. Many people try to compensate for a loss in wetlands by creating their own ponds.

Studies of the lower 48 states show a jump in the number of man-made storm water and farm ponds between 1998 and 2004, said Peg Bostwick a federal wetlands program coordinator for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality - the DEQ.

Creating working wetlands

Some are used as decorative reflecting ponds while others retain overflow. That doesn’t mean they are working wetlands. Much of them are a problem for people like Bostwick who are trying to piece together the actual wetland gains and losses.

“The question is, are you really gaining valuable wetlands or are you just gaining water?” Bostwick said. A number of Michigan reports conclude that there is still a net loss of wetlands across the state. That means the habitat for some critters is shifting. State officials estimate that 50 to 70 percent of Michigan’s wetlands have been drained or filled for recreational, agricultural and other uses.

Draining wetlands for farm fields is the biggest problem, Bostwick said. The swamp buster program in the ‘80s took away federal subsides for any farmer who drained wetlands, but that program was modified a few years ago, allowing them easier access to permits.

Mitigation – creating ponds or wetlands in one place to compensate for their loss somewhere else – isn’t the best choice, experts say.

“Unfortunately in Michigan, applicants tend to use it as the first alternative,” Mifsud said. “There are effective ways to use a site while still preserving the integrity and quality of habitat.”

But it is near impossible to replicate the exact conditions of a wetland.

“Most of the time, wildlife is not incorporated as conditions for permits,” he said.

Still, with an extra level of enforcement, such as local wetland ordinances, and getting the scientific community more involved, even the most urbanized areas can increase the diversity and success of their habitats, Mifsud said.

“I wouldn’t enter a career in urban ecology if I thought it was a lost cause.”

Related Links

Red Cedar River (Michigan)
Red Cedar Storm
Red Cedar Floods
Red_Cedar_Sewers
Red Cedar Farm
Red Cedar Groundwater
Red Cedar Pharmaceuticals