Volunteers Across State Rejuvenate Natural Resources

Volunteers Across State Rejuvenate Natural Resources

It's only five damp acres, definitely a minor wetland, and it's hidden in a densely shaded corner of Minneapolis unknown to most city residents.

Still, it's a special place: A natural tamarack bogs surrounded by urbanization, close by a busy interstate highway and far from northern Minnesota, where one would expect to find a tamarack bog.

A few years ago it appeared that the bog in Theodore Wirth Park would disappear. An alien weed, purple loosestrife, had invaded the area and was displacing native plants. Part of the bog had filled with decaying muck. The tamarack trees were being crowded out by a dense stand of glossy buckthorns, a European species of small tree.

But the bog is back, rejuvenated by a handful of volunteers working with the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. The tamaracks are thriving, the loosestrife and buckthorns are being ousted, and the volunteers planted 1,400 native bog plants that, in time, should reproduce and spread under the tamaracks.

Simply put, a small chunk of Minnesota's natural resource environment has been restored.

This is not an atypical project. Throughout Minnesota volunteers are working to restore our damaged natural resources. Sometimes they alone supply the necessary sweat and money. Sometimes they rely heavily on technical assistance and public funds. And sometimes they help government agencies.

Still, the goals remain the same: Halting the environmental abuses, healing the harm, helping native plants and wildlife to return, allowing natural processes to take over.

Not all of the restoration projects are intended to return vast tracts of land and water to a pristine, presettlement, prepollution state. More often, the projects are limited in scope, restoring small chunks of property and giving a little boost to wild things.

It's impossible to measure the total effects of such restoration work. Often it's done quietly. A farmer plants a stand of oak seedlings where corn and soybeans used to grow. A suburban homeowner replaces a bluegrass lawn with native wildflowers. Some 4-H teenagers help to rejuvenate a rural marsh. A fishing club helps state biologists to control erosion along a trout stream. A group of hunters converts a cow pasture into a habitat for Ringneck Pheasants.

There are hundreds of such grass-roots volunteer projects in Minnesota. And while they can't replace the major restoration work of, say, the state Department of Natural Resources or a national environmental group such as the Nature Conservancy, the sum benefit of the volunteers' efforts is large and growing.

The little tamarack bog is a remnant of the swampy land that once covered much of what is now Golden Valley and the adjacent part of Minneapolis. Most of that wetland was drained long ago to make way for urban expansion; the spring-fed bog was preserved largely because the surrounding land was acquired by Minneapolis officials in the early 1900s for the city park system.

However, if the Park Board hadn't acted to restore the bog, it surely would have faded away. Most of the heavy restoration work was done by the agency's maintenance crews. They built a temporary road to the area, removed the bigger buckthorns and excavated a large 3-foot-deep layer of decaying peat from the watery moat that encircles the bog. That created more natural conditions for the 200 mature tamarack trees and smaller native plants that can thrive in the wet, acidic soil of such bogs.

That work was financed by a $25,000 natural resource rehabilitation grant from the Metropolitan Council. But a lot of nitty-gritty work in the bog was done by unpaid volunteers under the guidance of Mary Maguire Lerman, who coordinates the Park Board's horticulture programs.

Three of the volunteers were college students of landscape architecture who this summer weeded seedling buckthorns and other alien vegetation from the bog. They also cut through the tough layer of sphagnum moss that grows over the bog, then planted 1,400 native plants such as American starflower, blue flag iris, swamp milkweed, bog laurel, marsh fern, the pitcher plant (which traps and eats insects) and Minnesota's state flower, the showy lady-slipper, a variety of orchid.

"We're already seeing a lot of seedling tamaracks and the seedlings of other bog plants coming back," said Christine Stephan, one of the volunteer students. "The natural seed bank is here in the bog, and the plants are returning because the buckthorn has been cut back, letting in the sunlight to help germinate the seeds."

A private group, the Lake Minnetonka Garden Club, provided $3,000 to help restore the native plants.

A group of teenagers from the Center for Community Action helped rebuild a trail that connects the bog to a small parking lot along Wirth Pkwy.

Also, the Legislative Commission on Minnesota Natural Resources has recommended that the Legislature approve $40,000 for more restoration work starting next year.

That money would come from the state cigarette tax and, among other things, would finance improved trail access to the bog without harming the environmentally sensitive area.

The Park Board is seeking volunteers for next year's work. That includes the continuing effort to rid the bog of persistent buckthorn seedlings.

And there are benefits for the Park Board and the volunteers. After they've worked on a project, the volunteers often become our best PR people.

People interested in volunteering for environmental restoration projects or other work in Twin Cities-area parks should contact their local park department.