Restoration Day - June
We had an amazing restoration day earlier this month. We spent time thinking and working like beavers to restore a wetland corridor and plug a few pond leaks, and we are so grateful to everyone who showed up!
Jeff Boland-Prom from the Illinois Beaver Alliance shared about the importance of beavers in our ecosystem, and Tom Simpson from the MCCD shared about fens, which are a unique local ecosystem, and the reason why this work started: our wetland restoration work has focused on restoring our fen by slowing the water and removing buckthorn to make it more attractive to beavers!
Below are some reflections shared by Jeff about the Restoration Day:
“Water should be free in the ground or on the surface. And most of the water in Wonderland comes from a spring fed pond in the middle of the land. The rest is coming down a gradient steep enough (for Illinois!) to prevent upstream flooding.
Reading the landscape here is easy. If we see a straight ditch running through a field, we are looking at a drained wetland that once had beavers. This is about 25% of Illinois! Virtually every stream, creek, river, pond, wetland and lake in what is now Illinois was occupied by beavers before European occupation.
As we were pulling material down slope to plug the leaks in the dike, we pulled some rocks out and tossed them to the top of the dike to use later. Rocks can be impervious or very porous, depending on how they are arranged. If a rock is completely surrounded by soil, the rock will completely block the water. If 2 or more rocks are touching, the area around their point of contact becomes a channel that allows the water to flow freely.
A similar dynamic applies to wood. If we are building a BDA in the middle of the stream, we want the wood to be as tight as possible to slow the water. When we are plugging a leak, we want the wood to be tight enough that we can easily stand with our feet a few centimeters above or below the surface, but it must be loose enough so that soil can easily fall through.
We had 2 things on our side: a great team, both Wonderlanders and volunteers, and gravity!”
Stay tuned for our next restoration day focused on tree and trail maintenance!
Volunteers and Wonderlanders working on the BDA
Observing the work and thinking about next steps… What would a beaver do?
Enjoying some time together by the finalized BDA after a long work day!
