Disappearing Marshes Difficult to Remedy

Take your pick: Marshes are the "nurseries of life" or the "kidneys of the watershed," said an expert on habitat restoration Thursday evening during a lecture titled "Long Island Sound: Restoring What Has Been Lost."

The impact of humans on the Sound has been significant, said Chris Cryder of Save The Sound, beginning with the draining of marshes along Connecticut's shoreline to eliminate mosquitoes. He spoke at the nature center at Sherwood Island State Park.

At one time there were more than 6,000 acres of salt marshes in the state, Cryder said, but now 61 percent of them are gone.

Legislation protecting shoreline property has meant no marshland has been lost since the 1970s, he said, and many organizations committed to preservation are working to restore marshes, with mixed success.

Connecticut is a leader in restoring salt marshes, Cryder said, but the process is expensive and does not always work.

By 2008, Cryder said, 2,000 acres of Connecticut marshes were restored, but some projects resulted in mud flats. There are a number of theories why, he said, including a rise in sea levels around the world.

As an example of a failed attempt to recreate a marsh, Cryder showed photos of enormous square bags of coconut fiber placed on a shoreline property that's submerged at high tide.

After four years, the last photo showed, the bags were covered in plant life, but the habitation didn't extend to the surrounding surface. In addition, he said, the bags began to decompose.

Save The Sound is based in New Haven with its sister organzation, Connecticut Fund for the Environment. The lecture was attended by about 20 people in the Nature Center in Sherwood Island State Park in Westport.

Cryder also presented examples of Connecticut rivers and streams that have been reopened to enable fish to spawn.

Some 7,000 dams and other blockages were built in Connecticut's rivers and streams to provide power for saw and grist mills, and to create ice houses, he said, and various methods have been used since then to restore fish spawning, including the installation of about 50 fish ladders and tidal gates since the 1980s.

Some installations have automated fish counters, he said, so researchers can measure their success.

In Rocky Neck State Park in Niantic, Cryder said, approximately $550,000 was spent to replace a culvert of corroded metal pipes with a concrete culvert so fish could resume reaching a freshwater pond.

Cryder concluded his program describing 33 "crown jewels" along both the Connecticut and New York shorelines of Long Island Sound that have been selected for preservation, including Sherwood Island State Park and the Norwalk River and harbor.

 One jewel of the "Stewardship Initiative," Cryder said, is Plum Island,  off the northeast coast of Long Island, which is currently the location of a federal government animal disease research center.

The government intends to relocate the research center to Kansas, Cryder said, and put the island up for bid. But only 100 acres of the 900 acre island have been developed, he said, and environmental organizations want its undeveloped portion to be turned over to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to be used as a wildlife refuge.