Wye Marsh Projects
Marsh Restoration
A hemi-marsh is a healthy marsh – an area half covered with open water and half covered by marsh vegetation. Marshes are one of nature’s nurseries for many species of aquatic micro and macro invertebrates, insects, fish, crustaceans, reptiles, amphibians, and plants. In the Wye Marsh’s earlier days, much more of the area was covered by open water, providing valuable habitat and food access for waterfowl such as ducks, geese, and swans, as well as other marsh birds, including Species At Risk like the Least Bittern and Black Tern.
The open water habitat of our marsh, so vital to local and migratory wildlife, is being swallowed up by cattail. Natural vegetation succession of a marsh allows changes from water to cattail, cattail to grasses and shrubs, then to trees. However, marsh habitat is in far shorter supply in Southern Ontario than previous years. Also, excess phosphorus from farms upstream has contributed to this growth. Therefore, the Wye Marsh Wildlife Centre, Ducks Unlimited, and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources aim to maintain the marsh as prime waterfowl habitat – a goal accompanied by many obstacles.
There are three types of cattail present in the marsh – narrow leaved cattail (Typha angustifolia), broad leaved cattail (Typha latifolia), and a relatively newly discovered hybrid between the two, hybrid cattail (Typha X glauca Godron). There are known ways of controlling the first two types of cattail mentioned, however the hybrid cattail is more resistant to control methods and has become the dominant cattail species in the Wye Valley.
In the 1980s, a machine called the Cookie Cutter sliced pathways through the marsh by chopping up the cattail to provide open water habitat. However, this remedy was short lived, and resulted in spreading the cattail further. Water drawdown, or draining the marsh to starve cattails of water, then flooding the cattail mats, is a method employed successfully by other managed marshes such as Tiny Marsh, through the use of water controls and berms. However, this is not possible in the main Mud Lake cell of Wye Marsh (see photos below) as there are natural boundaries on all sides of the cell rather than human-made berms. Also, the area of Wye is too large – it would need to be divided into separate cells. It is not possible to build dikes in the marsh, as the substrate is not solid. Plus, the cattails in the main cell exist on floating mats rather than permanent roots, and so would only rise with the water levels. Marshes in more remote areas are naturally burned by forest fires at regular intervals and are able to regenerate. While controlled burns are a successful method of vegetation control employed by many environmental sectors throughout North America, a fire could pose both a financial and safety risk to nearby businesses such as Sainte Marie Among the Hurons on the northern end of the marsh.
Recently a non-native genotype of a native species of marsh plant, the Common Reed (Phragmites australis) has become an invasive marsh plant, and has been confirmed in some Ontario marshes as replacing native stands of plants. This is a new phenomenon in Ontario, and is also occurring within Wye Marsh in conjunction with spreading cattail. Research is underway in Long Point, Ontario to determine appropriate control or eradication methods.
We are currently researching ways and seeking potential funding sources to help us solve the problem of “The Incredible Shrinking Marsh”. We welcome input from anyone with ideas on reducing the amount and spread of hybrid cattail – the Wye Marsh and its inhabitants would be eternally grateful.
