https://reasonstobecheerful.world/prairie-potholes-restoration-canada/
"Switchgrass and foxtail provided the perfect camouflage for a heron slowly
wading through a prairie pond. Only the squawking of a Canada goose mother
scolding her offspring shattered the bucolic stillness of the wetland. It was
the summer of 2023, and throughout large areas of the Canadian prairie
provinces and the Great Plains of the United States, increasingly dry
conditions had made water a precious resource. But not here. The 260-acre
Hannotte wetland in east-central Saskatchewan was an oasis in an otherwise arid
desert of wheat fields.
It hadn’t always been this way. The land had been drained for agriculture over
a century earlier, and it took 20 years of door-knocking for Kevin Rozdeba to
convince farmers in the Yorkton region of Saskatchewan that removing land from
crop production and turning it back into a wetland was in their best interests.
As a program specialist for Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUCS), a nonprofit
organization whose mission is to conserve and manage wetlands, Rozdeba knew a
wetland’s unique hydrology could contribute to water availability essential for
crop production in times of drought. Getting farmers on board, though, was a
tall order.
“Some landowners were an easy sell,” he says. “Others were more skeptical and
took the most amount of visits. I’d go back every couple of years and try to
build a case.”
It’s a story repeated across 770,000 square kilometers stretching across South
and North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Montana and into the Canadian
provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. This area, known as the
Prairie Pothole Region (PPR), was formed during the last ice age. As the
glaciers started to melt, heavy chunks of ice calved off and became buried in
prairie soil. Their enormous weight created permanent depressions in the
landscape.
“These basins are like saucers able to hold excess water,” says Suzanne Joyce,
a communications specialist with Ducks Unlimited. Serving as natural sponges,
they not only hold in water from snowmelt and rain events but have incredible
flood storage capacity, which helps keep water from running off the land.
Instead, it seeps through the layers of silt and sediment lining the basin,
recharging the underground wells and aquifers many prairie farmers rely on."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
