Bringing back ‘bio supermarkets’: Program helps landowners restore vanished wetlands

By Kirsti Marohn

Mike Niziolek looked out over a former livestock pasture, now a stretch of open water ringed with thick cattails and flowering plants.

By his estimate, 15 to 20 types of unique plants grow in this wetland he restored in the early 1990s. If he were to dip a container in the water, it would reveal countless species of invertebrates.

“This place is teeming with life,” said Niziolek, a retired biology teacher.

Resurrecting wetlands on his 150-acre property near Elk River in fast-growing Sherburne County has been an ongoing labor of love for Niziolek. He has spent decades working to recreate the condition of the land hundreds of years ago, before it was ditched and drained for farming and development.

Niziolek believes it’s a critical mission. Scientists estimate Minnesota has lost 50 percent of its original wetlands. In the southern part of the state, it’s more than 90 percent.

“In this case, we’re trying to restore them, which is a much more difficult task than saving the ones that we already have,” Niziolek said. “But we’re going to try, because it’s definitely worth the effort.”

Wetlands play a crucial role in nature: They store water on the land and help prevent flooding. They filter nutrient pollution, store carbon and provide habitat for birds and other wildlife.

But despite protections, wetlands continue to vanish. A federal report released in March found about 670,00 acres of vegetated wetlands across the U.S. disappeared from 2009-2019.

A recent state report found Minnesota had a small gain in net wetland acres from 2006 to 2020, but lost valuable forested wetlands, whose benefits are not easily replaced.

Niziolek restored his first wetland nearly three decades ago. It’s now a resting stop for migrating sandhill cranes and monarch butterflies, and home to Blanding’s turtles, a threatened species in Minnesota.

Niziolek describes wetlands as “bio supermarkets” due to their astonishing biodiversity.

“There are so many critters that use these spaces, either directly or indirectly,” he said. “It’s amazing.”

There are climate benefits, too. Some of Niziolek’s wetlands contain peat, a spongy, soil-like material made up of decomposed plants. Peat stores carbon that otherwise would be released into the atmosphere.

“That’s a carbon storage system that we can utilize to mitigate human cost climate change,” he said.

Niziolek received financial and technical help from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program. It works with private landowners to restore wetlands and other habitat on their land.

In recent years, the federal program has gotten help from the nonprofit Nature Conservancy, which provided money and hired staff to restore more wetlands in the Upper Mississippi headwaters region.

The wetlands help filter out nutrients before they reach the Mississippi River, said Chris Lenhart, a restoration ecologist with the Nature Conservancy and a University of Minnesota professor.

“They’re especially good at removing nitrogen, which contributes to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico,” Lenhart said.

Together, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nature Conservancy have completed 72 wetland restoration projects in the last five years. They plan to ramp up their efforts and do another 75 by the end of 2025.

There’s a backlog of about 200 landowners who want to restore wetlands on their property, said John Riens, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

“They understand it’s the right thing to do, and they can be a little piece of the solution on the landscape,” he said.

But recreating a complex wetland is not as simple as digging a hole and waiting for it to fill with water. First, restoration experts analyze the site, take soil samples and look to its past.

“We look at old imagery of what it might have looked like previously, or try to get a better understanding of historically what it was,” Riens said.

Using that information they design a unique plan for the site, and hire local contractors to remove dirt and construct the wetland. It takes time and effort to establish native plants and keep out invasive species like buckthorn, Riens said.

“Then we help the landowner try to manage the site in perpetuity so that they can be successful,” he said.

The newest restored wetland on Niziolek’s property was completed just a few weeks ago. Presently, it looks more like a large mud puddle. But a year from now, bulrushes and sedges will fill it with green color.

“The frogs will find this as well as the turtles, quite quickly,” Riens said.

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