Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast

Wetland Wonders: A Lake’s Defense Mechanisms

• Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams • Season 1 • Episode 4

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What if wetlands could save your community from catastrophic floods and polluted water? Join us as we uncover the hidden heroes of our ecosystems with Scott Fetters from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Scott's extensive expertise in wetland restoration sheds light on their crucial role in water filtration, flood control, and habitat creation. Hear about the inspiring stories behind the removal of low-head dams to improve river safety, and understand how wetlands act like natural sponges, absorbing and filtering our water.

Scott takes us on a journey through the unique characteristics that set wetlands apart from other aquatic systems. Ever wondered what makes a marsh different from a swamp or a bog? Discover the world of hydric soils, wetland vegetation, and specific hydrology regimes that define these vital ecosystems. We delve into the alarming loss of wetlands in Indiana and the tireless efforts to restore them, featuring local landmarks like Pisgah Marsh and the wetland complexes at Grace College. The importance of education and legislative support in conservation efforts is starkly highlighted.

In our special feature, we tackle the persistent problem of invasive wetland plants and celebrate the triumphs in their eradication. Learn about techniques such as reversing drainage processes and removing reed canary grass. Scott shares inspiring success stories, emphasizing the significant economic and environmental benefits that clean water and healthy wetlands bring to communities. Engage with us as we promote community involvement, water literacy, and practical steps for preserving these invaluable natural resources for future generations.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to the Lake Doctor podcast. I'm your host, Susie Light. I get to share some stories and talk about our beautiful lakes with my friend, Dr Nate Bosch. Nate, you got your doctorate from the University of Michigan in limnology.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's right, susie. Limnology is like oceanography, only it's the study of freshwater aquatic systems. On this podcast, we're going to dive into some lake science, meet folks who are passionate about our lakes, just like us, and have some fun together as well.

Speaker 1:

Visit lakesgraceedu, where you can learn more about the topics in this episode and support the Lilly Center's work.

Speaker 2:

In today's episode we have Scott Fetters with US Fish and Wildlife Service. We're going to talk about wetlands and why they're important.

Speaker 1:

We are so excited about today's episode, the Lake Doctor podcast. We are so excited. Today's topic is wetlands and with us today is Scott Fetters. Scott, welcome to our podcast.

Speaker 3:

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 1:

We'd like to hear a bit about you. Tell us about you and your work, as well as a bit about your personal life.

Speaker 3:

Okay, well, I work with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, it's with the Department of the Interior, with the federal government. My office is based here in Warsaw, indiana. I'm responsible for administering a program called the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program. It gives taxpayer money to private landowners to restore wetland habitat, prairie habitats. We've even done five or six lowhead dam removals on the Eel River.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's good to know.

Speaker 3:

So a little bit of my background. I did grow up in LaGrange County, just north of here, Unlike Dr Nate here to my right, I did attend Indiana University instead of Michigan we won't hold that against you.

Speaker 2:

There you go.

Speaker 3:

So I've worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service for 20 years. I also have 13 years in private consulting with an environmental and ecological restoration company based out of Walkerton, indiana, used to be known as JF New. Oh yes, been sold out several times since I left, but I was the senior most project manager for them, uh responsible for building uh wet wetland mitigation projects, uh stream mitigations, and I traveled all over the country doing that for them and had an opportunity to uh back to work for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. I started for them back in about 1991 right out of school and a career path kind of led me in another direction. So I worked for myself for about eight or nine years and then we started a family and that brought me to the Warsaw area in 92, 92, 93. So I've been here ever since and enjoy the northeastern Indiana lakes country.

Speaker 2:

You mentioned some low-head dam removals. We had one a little closer to home here. We removed a dam in the Tippecanoe River right here in the Warsaw area.

Speaker 3:

Right, yeah, I forgot about that one that was actually the first one that I worked on was, uh, just south of Fox Farm Road here on the west side of Warsaw. We took, took the dam out on on the Tippecanoe River and, um, you know, pretty, they're kind of expensive projects for no more work than it entails to remove them. But opening up the aquatic chain up to, you know, the upper reaches of the Tippecanoe River, the Eel River and some of the others that we've worked on, it's probably one of the cheapest things we can do to help improve aquatic habitat.

Speaker 1:

Does it help improve the navigability of a river?

Speaker 3:

Almost definitely. I mean take an example there on Fox Farm. That was about a three, three and a half foot drop. I was dumb enough to take it in a canoe about 15 years ago in a high water event, so it only dropped a foot and a half instead of three.

Speaker 2:

But I don't recommend that to anybody yeah, well, and oftentimes those low head dams can be quite dangerous because they create sort of a back welling. Yeah, behind there that, uh that paddlers can get caught up terribly terribly dangerous.

Speaker 3:

You know the one down at uh in whitley county called the column Dam. There was a death there, a fatality. A young man from Fort Wayne was killed in about probably 2018, 2017. We actually ended up tearing that dam out in about 2020, 2019 or 20, just before COVID hit.

Speaker 1:

His mom was a strong advocate for removal of low head dams, and advocacy is something that's really important. Maybe our listeners and viewers can learn a little bit more about how they can advocate for things like like wetlands. Wetlands, I think, are beautiful. I grew up near a couple, loved the wildlife and the birds that were in the wetlands. Tell, tell us about what else. What's the beauty of a wetlands? What does it do?

Speaker 3:

Oh. So there's been lots and lots of research from land-grant universities and universities all around the world talking about the benefits of wetlands. Basically, they may act as a sponge during high water events in spring and winter. They're able to store excess water that's coming from the watershed. They also have been known to act as the kidneys. They're able to filter pollutants coming out of the water, whether it be excess nutrients or phosphorus or nitrogen coming from the watershed. Nutrients or phosphorus or nitrogen coming from the watershed, the wetland plants are capable of taking up those excess nutrients and their biomass. So you know, for every acre that's destroyed, it's one less acre that we have available to us to perform some of those functions that you know. Unfortunately, someday we're going to have to pay for improving our water quality by chemical means and treating the water. So you know, mother Nature has a unique way of doing that on her own.

Speaker 1:

So when a wetlands acts like a sponge and absorbs water in a heavy rainfall or some other kind of event, what does that do for the river or the lake that is adjacent to a wetlands?

Speaker 3:

you can think of it as like, almost like a pulse, a pulse in the watershed, when, when, the what? When, say, a big three or four inch rain event or or a uh, early a spring fall on frozen ground and you get an inch rain. So if that water is able to be slowed down before it gets to the, the, the, the water system, whether it be the upper reaches of the Tippecanoe River, the smaller feeder streams, allows that water to lie on the landscape just a little bit longer before it enters into the aquatic system and then eventually makes its way to, say, chapman Lake or Barbie Lake.

Speaker 1:

So it can reduce flooding.

Speaker 3:

It can reduce flooding most definitely. It brings the hydro curve. It brings it down. It lessens that effect of the water to get to its ultimate destination.

Speaker 1:

This is so fascinating because we learned so many new terms like hydro curve. What is a hydro curve?

Speaker 3:

So a hydro curve basically, is plotting how long does it take for water to get from A to B and the curve will spike at that moment where the amount of water coming from the watershed has finally met its highest ability to deliver water and then it slowly metered out into the feeder stream and water is lost due to evaporation, due to transpiration, due to settling out in our streams and our lakes and our water bodies. So that hydro curve maps that tendency for water to move from one place to another and how long it may be there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, some will call that a hydrograph as well, and so, if you think of the amount of water that's coming through a particular stream at a particular time, and so in times of great flow you're going to have a peak flow there, and in times of low flow it's going to be low, and so what we would call a flashy stream would be a stream that has high, highs and low lows, because oftentimes of lack of wetlands, and so it's going to be a curve that looks like this, for how much stream flow is going through. Every time you get a high and a low, you've got opportunity for erosion. You've got opportunity. It's going to be a curve that looks like this, for how much stream flow is going through. Every time you get a high and a low, you've got opportunity for erosion. You've got opportunity to wash a lot of things into our lakes that we don't necessarily want to be in our lakes, and so wetlands can help dampen that and make that hydrograph curve be more natural over time.

Speaker 1:

Scott, would you define a wetland? How is it different from a lake, a stream, a swamp?

Speaker 3:

but basically, when it boils down to it, a wetland is an area that has three characteristics. Number one, the soil, is called a hydric soil hydros from the Greek word loving water, water loving. So you've got to have a hydric soil. The vegetation is wetland vegetation. It's capable of growing in anoxic conditions. And then the third one is the water or the hydrology regime. Is the water or the hydrology regime? Years ago it used to be. It needed to be within a foot of the surface for seven consecutive days during the growing season. But basically it's soils, water and vegetation.

Speaker 1:

Plants that like wet feet.

Speaker 3:

Yes, water-loving plants.

Speaker 1:

I love wetlands. I like lakes a lot, but I love wetlands. I love wetlands. I like lakes a lot, but I love wetlands and nothing like hearing the Red Wing Blackbirds singing. What can we do to help protect the wetlands?

Speaker 3:

You know, being educated about the value and importance of wetlands is the first thing I mean. An opportunity to present at something like this today reaches out to a lot of people that hopefully may not have been familiar with wetlands. I've always been convinced. You know, life is a learning process your entire life. You should always be willing to reach in and get a little bit out of your comfort zone and learn something new every day. So, wetlands, be informed, be educated, be a voting person that reaches out to your local congressmen and your congresswomen about the values and importance of wetlands in our lives. Sponges and kidneys.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sponges and kidneys. Yeah, the sponges. And kidneys.

Speaker 3:

We need to let them know that they're still important to us. One of the big reasons why they're so important is now that we know more about them and what they do is the fact that 85% of all of our wetlands in Indiana have been lost that much Since pre-European settlement. Originally there was about seven, seven and a half million acres of wetlands in the state of Indiana and with 85% of those gone, that amount of landscape missing is something that it's kind of hard to replace. You know we've been restoring wetlands with our program since 1987, but I can't even tell you a number. Off the top of my head we may be at 10,000 or 15,000 acres of restored wetlands, not in the millions yet huh, not in the millions.

Speaker 1:

So in Kosciuszko County, where could somebody go to see a good wetlands?

Speaker 3:

where could somebody go to see a good wetlands? Probably one of them that I would lead them to is one of my favorite up at pisgah marsh. Yes, up at the indiana dnrs, one of their southern most properties administered by tri-county fishing wildlife area. Pisgah marsh is really, really a neat place because you can see the whole thing. You can see the marsh, you can see the adjacent upland oak savanna, you can see how glaciers form that area and why they were an integral part and why we do have wetlands in northern Indiana.

Speaker 3:

And when the last glaciers receded they left large blocks of ice on the landscape that became Chapman Lake and Tippie Lake and Lake Wawasee and even a little Pike Lake here in downtown Warsaw. But Kosciuszko County is blessed with a rich aquatic life and it's because of the glaciers that, once they receded it left those areas and you know, unfortunately a lot of them have been drained. When I say drained, they were drained with, whether it be open surface ditches or tiles that were installed in the ground to remove the excess water off the ground to make it arid so it could be farmed. But many of those areas are still restorable today and that's that's what our program does, is we try to restore wetland habitat.

Speaker 1:

Are there any targeted areas in Kosciuszko County that you're going to work on, or are currently working on or wish to work on?

Speaker 3:

We call it being strategically opportunistic. We'll take them wherever we can get them Okay.

Speaker 2:

Well, I know, even at grace college on our campus we've got three different wetland complexes and you've come out there to kind of take a look at those. One of you know you mentioned marsh before, with pisgah as a good example of a marsh, but we have other types of wetlands as well so we've got a swamp which is more of a wooded sort of wetland, with large mature trees in that, and that's one that we have on campus. Bog would be another example.

Speaker 3:

Fens are groundwater driven, so you've got that interface between a more upland silty clay loam soil where it meets a sandy loam at the bottom of the toe of the slope, so you've got groundwater inputs coming into areas that have organic soil. Fens are really unique. I've had the opportunity to work on four or five of them in the county, several just into Noble County.

Speaker 2:

And different types of plant communities and fens. Like you'll have sedges. Oh, yeah, yeah, most definitely sedges, you'll have a pitcher plant.

Speaker 3:

Sundews that are carnivorous plants. Do we have venus fly traps here too? I don't know. I don't know if we do, I don't, I doubt it okay but we do have carnivorous plants yeah, yeah um.

Speaker 1:

There's a fen along the winona Trails. I learned that by attending one of the lakes and streams events.

Speaker 3:

Now one of the other things a lot of the acreage in Indiana that we still have in wetland habitat is forested, the forested riparian area, those areas along the streams, and that exhibits that tendency to hold excess water during flooding events. Water quality improvements where the water and the sediment settles out yeah, so that would be like a flood plain, yeah forest right so we've got a stream like, say, the tippecanoe river.

Speaker 2:

At certain times of year it, uh, it rises and it's, it spills over its banks into the floodplain kind of the shoulder area next to the river and the water slows down. Sediments that might be in the water start to settle out, nutrients might get filtered out from some of the plant communities that are in that floodplain and then, as the water recedes back down, then you hope that then that's cleaner as it's moving through because of that floodplain area.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so one of the things I've noticed, in those ditches that you were talking about, there are some invasive species that are growing and what can we do to eradicate those or help protect against those?

Speaker 3:

so, yeah, there are. There are numerous um plant species that are there that are invasive in our wetland habitats. Um, probably one of them that that comes to my mind most recently all the time, is, uh, phragmites, common reed as some people call it people think those are cattails yeah, they are not.

Speaker 3:

No, they're not not quite cattails, you know they can. They can reach 8 to 12 13 feet tall under the right growing conditions, and what you see growing above ground is just a fraction of what is beneath the ground in the underground rhizome root system. Uh, they're terribly hard to get rid of. It's not just spray at one time and you've got it taken care of. It's usually two or three years so is.

Speaker 1:

Why is that dangerous to a wetlands?

Speaker 3:

well, some of these plants like this, these invasive plants, I mean like uh, phragmites, is from, uh, from asia. Uh, it's thought to have come across on wooden ships in the late 1800s as packing material. Oh, that's that's. There's been some information that would lead us to believe that it can out-compete the native wetland plants that provide habitat for fish and wildlife, for threatened and endangered species, and these invasive plants that we're seeing in our wetland areas just really prevent all of the other good things from finding their niche.

Speaker 1:

So a friend of mine explained that if an invasive species is living somewhere and natural, the birds may not come and eat, or insects may not come and pollinate, and if the birds aren't there they're not eating the mosquitoes. And if the mosquitoes continue to grow and mosquitoes can spread disease, it's like okay, folks, we really need to be paying attention to this stuff because in the long run it's for our health yeah and clean water I mean what.

Speaker 3:

That's why wetlands are so important. It's they're the interface between the true aquatic and the upland terrestrial. There's a lot of stuff going on right there, at that interface, where life is made possible for a lot of different species. And and when you throw an invasive species into that mix, that crowds out and and takes away from everything else, it's all it's. It's a big uh, it's a chain, of chain reaction. It affects everything. You know, if you don't have habitat for dragonflies and damselflies now you may have more mosquito larvae Now you've got problems with mosquitoes in your backyard, not to say that every wetland doesn't produce mosquitoes. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that A lot of animals need those mosquitoes, right, that's very true, yep.

Speaker 1:

So are there other invasive species that we need to be paying attention to, as it relates to lakes.

Speaker 2:

I would say a big one for the lakes themselves would be zebra mussels. And zebra mussels have moved in from Black and Caspian Seas, we think coming over in ballast tanks on large trans-oceanic ships, think coming over in ballast tanks on large trans-oceanic ships, and then those moving into the Great Lakes and then from people's boats moving then from the Great Lakes into some of our inland lakes, like we have here in Kosciuszko County. Zebra mussels are great filter feeders, so they filter out lots of algae out of the water, which we hey, that's a good thing, but we've found that zebra mussels Do they eat blue-green algae?

Speaker 2:

No, that's the problem. So they eat some of the good types of algae and the bad type of algae the blue-green algae, cyanobacteria, which can produce toxins. They leave that alone, and so they actually give a competitive advantage to the bad type of algae in our lakes.

Speaker 1:

Are all invasive species, whether it's at a wetlands or in a lake, are all invasive species bad?

Speaker 2:

I can't think of any examples where they're good.

Speaker 3:

I can't either. I can't think of a single one.

Speaker 2:

Now we should distinguish invasive means. It's a species that comes in and sort of takes over, so there's no longer the diversity, because it just becomes what we'd call, maybe, a monoculture of that species Okay.

Speaker 1:

and why are monocultures dangerous?

Speaker 2:

Well, some of the things that Scott was talking about. We want a diversity. So there's a drought and certain plants are going to do better in drought conditions than others. Or there's a big rainfall and certain will do better under that scenario. Different animals will move in at different times of the year, pollinators need need flowering plants at different times of the year, and so we need that diversity for everything to work together and function as it's supposed to I had a professor once that that uh used an analogy would you rather eat off the menu or go to the buffet?

Speaker 3:

So it's very similar in the fact that if you've got a multitude of native species, you've got a lot of opportunity for everything to make a living off of it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, is that the menu, or is that the buffet?

Speaker 3:

That's the buffet, okay.

Speaker 2:

The menu. You have to choose, just one thing. Okay, thanks.

Speaker 1:

That's a good one. So we've got these invasive species that have come here over periods of time. Is it possible to remove them all?

Speaker 3:

All. All is a big word. We can definitely make an effort to lessen their impact, to educate people about it's not a one and done. You need everybody to be educated as to why it needs to be addressed. It needs to be addressed. It's a community effort that will be needed to make a true impact. Wetlands, being at that unique location on the landscape and the topography, have the ability to improve water and make life available, Like you said. Like you said, you like wetlands.

Speaker 1:

They're critical.

Speaker 3:

We need to. We need to realize that they are critical for everything that we do. You know, someday we'll be paying for making improvements to our water quality because we no longer have wetland areas that provide these functions for us. So we all need to be aware of that and make it part of our daily lives.

Speaker 1:

So you said you're looking for opportunities to recreate wetlands. Where would be the best place for those opportunities to arise? We may have a listener that has what used to be a bog that might be interested in restoring it. How would we go about doing that?

Speaker 3:

Well, interesting bog that might be interested in restoring it. How would we go about doing that? Well interesting, you asked suzy. Um, a lot of the landowners that our program works with are people that are maybe new owners of the property or second or third generation ownership, and, and you know, grandma and grandpa farmed it and mom and dad worked in industry and tried to farm. And now the third generation, they don't farm but they're interested in and I've I've worked with a lot of people in that that third segment there, that that have an interest in the outdoors, in in wildlife, in hunting and fishing. So a lot of the people we work with are kind of in that scenario.

Speaker 3:

There's so many more tools nowadays that are available to wetland restoration practitioners. I mean, when I first started it was it might even be before Nate even remembers this they used to have a plastic dot counter and you would count a dot on an aerial picture to figure out how many acres your project was. Now we've got GIS at my desktop and I can bring in information from the Kosciuszko County GIS department and click right on it and tell you how many acres it's going to be, how many acre feet of water storage is capable, wow, and it's just fascinating what is available at your desktop these days.

Speaker 2:

And sometimes it's just as simple, as you talked about earlier. A lot of our wetlands have been drained, if we just reverse whatever that process was to drain them. So if there was a ditch that came through a low area a surface ditch to remove water, you know, removing that ditch so that that water no longer can leave that low area and it starts to slowly fill in over time, once again can leave that low area and it starts to slowly fill in over time once again. Or if there's a tile drain that goes under that area of the soil, breaking that tile drain so no longer water can convey out of that area and again it starts to fill in. And it's amazing, a lot of times the natural seed bank is there from years ago, such that some of these native wetland plants can come right back even without being planted that's.

Speaker 3:

That's very true. I mean, I've seen it time and time again in the last 15, 20 years on projects where, uh, you a very simple, like he said to find the tile, break the tile, restore that. We call it restoring hydrology, restoring water to the table. As soon as you put water back on the landscape, the seed bank could be over 100 years old and it still finds itself to the surface and, yeah, you're going to get some bad stuff that will come along. Another one that we need to be concerned with is reed canary grass.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I'm not familiar with that one. What does it look like?

Speaker 3:

So reed canary grass right now, this time of year. It's anywhere from four to six feet tall, it has a seed head on it about two to four inches tall, and it is a very prolific cool season grass that grows in damp conditions, and it's from Asia as well.

Speaker 1:

Does the seed head look like a flower? Is it?

Speaker 3:

Kind of a brownish yellow plume, more of a yellowish-brown, has a dense underground root system that basically chokes everything out.

Speaker 2:

It's a narrow main stem that comes up, with blades that come off of it, and oftentimes some of the blades are dead and other ones are alive, so it has kind of a unique look to it in that way. And that one was actually purposefully brought for grazing animals in kind of wet areas, and now we know better, so now we're trying to get rid of it, right.

Speaker 3:

Some of the farmers that I've worked with. They're like well, you want to restore that marsh hay area? Yeah, I said, well, you may call it it marshay, but it's canary grass. And he said, well, we planted that at 10 pounds to the acre, you know, back in the 1960s, so it's, it's a very prolific seed producing grass.

Speaker 1:

Uh, anything we can do to try to put natives back on the landscape, we're all going to fare better, yeah so you talked about timing, of when you want to eradicate something, and I'm thinking, if it's got a seed head, that when is the best time to eradicate something like that? Well, yesterday okay, before it developed to see that or before the seed spread.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you need to get on it early, um? So with any of those invasives you may have heard me say it's not just one application and you're done. It's multiple seasons. If you spray early in the spring with some sort of grass-specific herbicide, those grasses have such a large root system that all you're really doing is burning off the top of the plant. It's called top killing, yeah, in the trade industry. So you may spray it and think you've killed it, but then come this fall, you just invigorated it and it and it comes up from underground stolons and they re-sprout and they come back 10 times as bad. So a fall spray is actually more conducive to getting rid of it because in the fall of the year the grass is taking nutrients back into the root system for the upcoming winter.

Speaker 1:

Now, Nate, it seems like you have a student, a former student, someone who graduated from Grace College and that you worked with through the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams that addresses that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so Duke and Julian, one of our graduates we're really proud of. He works for the Southern Indiana Cooperative Weed Management Area. He just calls it SICM, which is their acronym, which we think is very appropriate.

Speaker 1:

Go SICM, those native, not native weeds right.

Speaker 2:

Right right, those non-native, those exotic weeds or other plants. So he works in a variety of different types of ecosystems and their organization will come in to work with landowners, similar to how Scott was describing. He works with landowners and develop a plan for managing then those non-native species, kind of over time. You don't have to tackle it all at once and um, because, as Scott said, it does take a while and I think we need to be careful and what our expectation is for these non-native invasive species. We're probably not going to get rid of them from Indiana, if we're being honest and realistic, but we can manage them and in certain areas that are especially sensitive, where there's maybe threatened or endangered species or there's an area that's particularly important for a downstream lake ecosystem or something more, efforts can be put into some of those certain areas and we can hold things at bay in other areas a little bit more and kind of maintain and keep them from growing worse.

Speaker 1:

Scott, if there were to be three things that you wanted our listeners to take away from this, what would those three things be?

Speaker 3:

Stay engaged, stay involved in your local communities about the importance of not just wetlands but water quality. I guess a lot of times I've heard vote with your feet. I mean you have the opportunity to grab the ear of the local, whether it be the county commissioners, the county councilman, your state representative, state senator. Make it known that wetland habitat is important to you, and rightfully so. I mean Kosciuszko County. Nate knows more about this than I do, but the economic value of the lakes in this county in which we live is a tremendous opportunity, a tax base for the state of Indiana, and it's all impacted by water quality. I don't care if you're Zimmer Biomet or you're mom and pop that owns a piece of property on Irish Lake. We all rely on clean water and that opportunity. So I guess I don't know if I could come up with three of them, but one of them for sure you need to be informed, be educated and make sure you let people know why it's important.

Speaker 1:

If somebody wanted more information about their property and how they would want to manage their wetlands, where would they reach you?

Speaker 3:

My office is housed here at the US Department of Agriculture in Warsaw on Bell Drive, right across the road from the Zimmer Biomet facility, the original Biomet building. You can email me, call. I've been around the community a long time. A lot of people know me. They can get you in touch with me. But yeah, well, that's free of charge. That's just an opportunity to come out and meet with you and take a look at your property and see if there's anything that our program might be able to provide assistance to you on.

Speaker 1:

So give me an example of something that you've worked with an individual homeowner on their wetlands and how you've helped them.

Speaker 3:

Well, I've done as small as a half acre wetland project for a school. Oh neat, I've done a little three-quarter acre planning at the washington stem facility on state road 15.

Speaker 1:

State road 15 by the high school uh, the science teachers are using that area. Yeah, they are exciting, yeah that's.

Speaker 3:

Those are you when you think about it, when you have the opportunity to reach out to young minds. That's pretty important. You know, is it as much bang for the buck if I go restore a 100-acre wetland or do I do a half-acre prairie for a school in downtown Warsaw?

Speaker 1:

Investment in the future. That's right, that's right, that's right. That's what it is, that's exciting.

Speaker 2:

We call that water literacy at the Lilly Center. And so as we raise those water literate citizens, they're going to make better choices then for their own properties in the future with wetlands that they might have. That's very true.

Speaker 3:

I mean there's a big push to restore habitat for educational purposes, for water quality. I mean, right here in town, just late last summer, early fall, I worked with Zimmer Biomet to take 17 acres on their campuses out of cool season grass. Instead of mowing it 20, 30 times a year, we're converting it to native prairie Beautiful. So that's a pretty neat thing. I mean. I get to drive by it every day. It's starting to take shape. Give it another year or two and they'll be happy with it.

Speaker 3:

You don't have to mow it. Yeah, you don't have to mow it anymore. Win-win, win, double win.

Speaker 1:

That's really important. You know, some people will look at that and say it's weeds and there is beauty in a swamp a wetlands a prairie. Thank you so much, scott, for the good work that you are doing.

Speaker 3:

We so appreciate it. Yeah, appreciate it, thank you.

Speaker 1:

And thank you to our listeners. We have sure enjoyed this opportunity to bring you uh information about wetlands welcome back to the lake doctor podcast.

Speaker 2:

My name is dr nate bosh. I'm the director of the lily center for lakes and streams. With me today is scott fetters of the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams, with me today is Scott Fedders, with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Speaker 2:

We've got a fun segment for you here today. We're going to be talking about three categories that we can put plants and animals into. We've got native, exotic and invasive. First one is native. These would be plants and animals that have always called this part of our world home. So we're in Kosciuszko County in Indiana, so these would be plants that have always been here in Kosciuszko County, indiana. The next category is exotic.

Speaker 2:

Some people will call this non-native, so species that have moved here from another location. Maybe it's from across the world, in Asia or Europe, could be from South America, maybe just from a different part of the United States. And then our third category is invasive. These could technically be native or exotic species. It just refers to the fact that these species move in and sort of take over other species in that particular area, often becoming a monoculture where that's the only species that's there any longer. And so we're going to take our different species that we have here and we're going to be putting them up on this board with what category they fit in. So Scott's going to go ahead and start with the first species.

Speaker 3:

Okay, I'm going to go with swamp milkweed. Swamp milkweed is a native wetland plant native to all of most of North America. It's an important plant for many pollinators, including monarch butterfly that will more likely, in our lifetime, be on the endangered species list. Swamp milkweed likes to have its feet a little on the damp side, so it's growing in those areas adjacent to streams, lakes, wetlands and it just. It's a good all-around pollinator plant for many things and provides opportunities for fish and wildlife habitat.

Speaker 2:

And monarchs will use swamp milkweed as well as common milkweed.

Speaker 3:

They will use it, but the common milkweed is the preferred host plant for the larvae of the monarch butterfly. But they're in the same family and still an important species.

Speaker 2:

Good, I'll go next. I'm going to choose the zebra mussel here and this one. I'm going to straddle the line between both exotic and invasive. So zebra mussels Black and Caspian Seas 1980s came into the Great Lakes and are invasive in that they've moved and displaced a lot of our native mussel species and they also clear out a lot of algae. So some people say, hey, it's great, my lakes getting clearer. Yes, algae are being eaten. But what's the alternative? They don't eat blue green algae, which is a bad type of algae that can produce toxins.

Speaker 3:

Next one scott next one we're going to go with, uh, japanese maple. I think I'm going to put it somewhere here in between exotic and invasive, because it is non-native to North America but it's used quite frequently in landscaping and it does have a tendency to move outside of where it's planted and it can out-compete and out-place our native plant species here, especially like here in Indiana and Kosciuszko County. You'll see it growing along the Byer Trail. It wasn't planted there but it came from the landscaping bed nearby. There's a lot of other things that you can see on the trail system, but Japanese maple would be one of those. You know a landowner might consider planting something that's more native. This is more of a shrub, you know. It might only get 8 to 12 feet tall, maybe 20 feet tall at the most. But you can look at some of our native shrubs in Indiana, like maybe black hot. Black hall viburnum is one that has a beautiful black hall.

Speaker 3:

I'm sorry, black hall H a haw.

Speaker 2:

Man, that sounds like you're from the south. Yeah, black haw.

Speaker 3:

It's a viburnum that has a bright, vibrant crimson red leaf in the fall, but it's native and good for local wildlife.

Speaker 2:

Cool. All right, I've got one more here. This is an osprey, so this is one of our birds of prey. You can see here with the shaped beak. So some people will get this mixed up with a bald eagle, Both native here in Indiana and specifically in Kosciuszko County. Both also enjoy fishing on our local lakes and streams. Difference would be. You can see we've got white in different parts of the osprey and there's even some darker colors on the head, whereas a bald eagle obviously is going to be in adult plumage, is going to be all brown with all white on its head. When they're up flying above, one way you can tell is when they're carrying a fish. So a bald eagle will carry the fish horizontally in its talons, whereas an osprey is always carrying the fish like the fish is swimming through the air, which is kind of an interesting thing. But the osprey, one of our native species and we love seeing those here in Indiana.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Lake Doctor podcast. Join us next time. It's bound to be fun.

Speaker 2:

Listening to this podcast is just the first step to making your lake cleaner and healthier. Visit lakesgraceedu for more information about our applied research and discover some tangible ways you can make a difference on your lake.

Speaker 1:

We'll see you next time. The doctor is in.