The living swamp

Recently I had the opportunity to walk into Trout Creek Swamp. Walking into a swamp is something one must do with extreme care. Rare and fragile plants such as swamp birch, Betula glandulosa, tiny swamp cranberry, Vaccinium oxycoccos and the sundew pictured above live there.

I feel a bit reluctant to even talk about this place for fear it will become too popular.

Everywhere you put your foot in a swamp you are stepping on a living part of a delicate ecosystem. A wetland can be worked or loved to death. It can also be destroyed by man’s desire for cow food — the fate of Trout Creek Swamp in the late ’20s and early ’30s. It was the Era of Reclamation. That meant that “useless” swamps like that created in the last Ice Age along Trout Creek could be drained and made into a pasture for cows.

Ditches were dug across and through the ancient swamp. Water was quickly drained away and flora and fauna that depended on the life-giving waters flowing in and under the old peat soils began to die, or if they could, escape.

Goals, economics and life styles change. The beautiful swamp, drained of it’s life-giving waters, was not that good a grazing ground for cows and with the changes, plans to make the swamp into a pasture fell by the wayside and the so-called reclamation project was forgotten.

The problem is, the ditches are still there, the swamp is still dying, trees are invading the planned pasture — and worst of all — reed canary grass, a noxious weed planted by well-meaning people long ago, has invaded the wetlands at an alarming rate.

Then along came Stu Garret who has been looking at the swamp from an ecological point of view for 15 years.

For someone like Dr. Garrett, past president of The Native Plant Society of Oregon and a person interested in the insectivorous plants in fens on the Deschutes National Forest, the specter of a dying wetlands was not a pleasant sight.

The Forest Service contacted Stu and asked him to help them in an effort to restore the swamp.

The Sisters Ranger District, Deschutes National Forest, Upper Deschutes Watershed Council, Central Oregon Native Plant Society and — Through an anticipated grant — the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board are in the effort up to their hip boots.

The Trout Creek Wetland Restoration Project was identified as a priority by the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council and the Deschutes National Forest because of the joint benefits to rare plants and sensitive fish, and the support from local community groups, such as Stu Garrett, and the Central Oregon Native Plant Society.

Stu and I had the pleasure of touring Trout Creek Wetlands with USFS biologists Mike Riehle and Ryan Houston to discuss the activities that will be taking place in the ancient swamp. The goal of the Trout Creek Wetland Restoration Project is to restore a natural hydrologic regime to protect rare fen wetland plant communities and improve habitat for the USFS-designated “Sensitive” redband trout — which are alive and well in Trout Creek today.

About 30 check dams will be placed across the ditches now draining the swamp of its life-giving waters. That sounds like a good idea but it ain’t gonna be easy. Just placing a machine in the swamp to build those check dams faces monumental challenges and could create more problems than it would solve.

When it comes to healing a wetland, Dr. Garrett believes we should take to heart a statement directly from the doctor’s manual: “First, do no harm.”

When man and machine begins the process of repairing the “reclamation” damage to Trout Creek Wetlands, the utmost care must be taken as to where they travel, where they dig and what they do.

The best scheme for eliminating obnoxious and harmful canary reed grass is to carefully apply chemicals to individual plants. It is vital to first look very carefully at the ecological impacts of chemicals in a wetland community before such treatment begin.

This summer, work will begin to return water to Trout Creek Wetlands; damage of past exploitation will begin to vanish and harmony within our earth’s living systems will again flourish. However, it’s going to take a great deal of planning, TLC, and money to insure that it doesn’t become another engineering scheme.