Restoring Wetlands in Ohio

Like rivers merging, land conservation and water protection run together in farming regions. Waterways can be degraded by a wide range of agricultural practices, from tilled fields left bare to manure stockpiles and streamside grazing. Yet the waters at risk are often the foundation of community well-being—supplying drinking water, providing recreational opportunities and supporting wildlife. 

By conserving upland areas that protect aquatic resources, land trusts can help to keep local farms thriving and, in some cases, provide alternatives for farmers on non-productive land. And watershed-scale work grows more important—and more challenging—as climate disruptions like droughts and floods increase. 

Integrating agricultural land and watershed protection, while potentially complex, often fosters exciting partnerships and builds public support for land trust work, as the following stories demonstrate.  

“We’ve been thinking about clean water from the very beginning,” reflects Rob Krain, executive director of the accredited Black Swamp Conservancy (BSC), an Ohio land trust dedicated to protecting both agricultural and natural lands. Its first conservation agreement protected Lake Erie marshland, and the organization draws its name from a wetland ecosystem that once spanned 1,500 square miles in northwest Ohio and northeast Indiana.  

Settlers converted much of that original wetland to farmland by installing subsurface drainage tiles, and now soil nutrients from agricultural fields routinely wash into tributaries of Lake Erie, prompting toxic algal blooms there.  

Even before the 2014 crisis in Toledo, when the drinking water supply for half a million residents was shut down for days due to toxic algae, BSC had recognized the importance of restoring wetlands. Those ecosystems provide natural filtration for what Krain describes as a “landscape dominated by agriculture, with little natural land cover and wildlife habitat.”  

In 2012, BSC began working to restore stretches of floodplain farmland with poor productivity into wildlife-rich wetlands. It was exciting, Krain says, to see “how quickly the wildlife responds.” Land trust members were also enthusiastic about this initiative, with several key donors significantly increasing their gifts.  

The land trust drew on partners such as The Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited (both accredited) for technical expertise, and forged agreements with local park districts and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to assist with habitat management required in the early years of restoration.  

Even with that help, Krain acknowledges, the wetland restoration work required “a lot of technical and scientific expertise we didn’t have previously,” and involved grant-reporting requirements “a lot more onerous” than those for land acquisition.  

BSC took its time building skills and forging partnerships, Krain says, sitting out some earlier funding opportunities for water-quality work and keeping a low profile. The reward for that patience came this year, when the state created a substantial H2Ohio fund—aimed at preventing nutrient runoff and restoring wetlands to protect Lake Erie. BSC submitted six proposals for consideration, Krain says, and had “built a reputation for being able to do these projects well.”  

Thanks to that preparedness, BSC is now poised to manage $3 million in restoration projects over the next two years through that program alone—a major leap forward for a land trust with six staff members. While grant awards are still being finalized, Krain is prepared for change: “Our budget may increase three-fold next year!”