How Diverting a Dead River Created a Thriving Wetland for Wildlife

we've diverted the stagnant River into an old agricultural field overrun by invasive plants and the results are already really exciting we've managed to flood an area larger than 50 football fields unclogging the river and creating a thriving new Wetland which will act as a long-term refuge for wildlife an island of life in amongst the endless agricultural landscape but this didn't happen overnight every step that I take is releasing these uh these bubbles that are stored in the bottom of this of this Creek and it's really stinky picture like um like a hot spring but significantly worse and yeah this river is not dead but it is in trouble and that is why we are trying to help it and in the meantime or with that help we also want to do an extra thing

which is to create a whole new Wetland my visit to this stinky part of the brook comes at a very exciting time because after 2 years of planning and satisfying the various bureaucratic requirements of this type of work we finally have the green light Siggy our master floodman and the team at BR are ready to start digging our original plan was to dig from here to the corner of this wet forest and then towards the field however after all the planning and Consulting with the local farmer we ended up deciding to dig it from here connecting directly with this little Wetland and then digging the rest on the other side to towards the field and with everything ready the contractors began digging in the early spring of 2024

starting with the main segments of the channel and by May those were ready and had already flooded with rain water so let's begin this uh this Tour by getting out of the muuk out of the uh Chili's Brook and um start to show you where this channel is going to go the area near the brook has been cleared of trees to allow for the building of the channel here where I'm walking right now which will connect with the next segment that has already been dug through the forest now this is a brand new channel so there's little to see in terms of plants but the groundwater that has flooded in has already attracted the first inhabitants which is always cool to see so this area here is where we've had to

make a tradeoff we've essentially carved the channel through the forest we've had to cut down some of this forest in order to create this Channel and the trade-off to me and to those running this project and who understand the local environment here it's it's trade-off that's worthwhile because with this we are creating we're not only fixing the riparian habitat over there but we're also creating the super rare wet sge Meadows and that is so much rarer than the forested habitats that we have here that it becomes worthwhile doing the trade that's just how it is pragmatic rewelding I mean that there was pretty cool quick this is the uh just the side of where the channel was dug and there's already a couple of borrows in them nature is so

fast so opportunistic I think uh that was a nutria which uh is a not a native animal but cool nonetheless I uh I had fun filming it for a moment there and um now we're getting to yeah the main area that this channel connects to so as the channel ends here you can see here it goes then it connects with a lake which I've shown you in one of the previous videos this is a lake that's it's been here a while it essentially flooded through groundwater but now we're bringing an additional amount of water to it or we will be bringing an additional amount of water to it from the Chili's Brook which um which is also really exciting it's a bit of a side feature of this project to expand the

Wetland among this Forest on the other side of the flooded forest was the last big segment that was already dug and it was also flooded with groundwater and now at this point the only missing parts were these ones here that needed to have underground passages the work on this went on over the last weeks of spring and the early summer the difference with these segments is that we need the water to run underground here near the brook it needs to allow the neighboring farmer easy access to his fields and down over here we need to make sure that this little public dirt road stays usable and once these were finished it was finally time for the big inauguration unfortunately I couldn't be there on the

day itself but sigy and the Bro Team were there and so were a bunch of television networks and other forms of traditional media who wanted to report on the project which was really cool to see and I was also really happy to see these videos of the water rushing in to provide new life and new opportunity in these fields and I do genuinely think that this project rightfully got all of this attention because it is a very neat solution it uses two places which are under delivering from a natural perspective a utopic river which lost its natural ending and a dry field covered in non-native invasive plants and it turns them both into something better when I came here in the spring this look uh look like a lost cause kind

of place you know really sad and look at it now that is a very big difference it will be really interesting to see what a few full yearly Cycles will do to this place hopefully it will clean up some of this mess and make a dent in the problem however when it comes to the flooded Fields the results are a lot more obvious so let's go check out the flooding I started this visit like I usually do by heading out with Sig to get the lay of the land proper Westland yeah that's really cool man still not in the middle we're still not in the middle man this is huge the middle is where are the trees the middle is where the trees are all the way in the back yeah this is really big man and it's flooded all the way through to there

yeah but some of the Aras are like there is deeper water for example here there is like it's too high so not under the water so it's really different patches well that's good no I mean that's what you want yeah ah nice shall we check what's in there yeah on our way we picked up one of the camera traps that the team has left here and took a quick sneak peek at what animals I might find here over the next few days wild board wild yeah but that's like that's Mama that's a big B there were all kinds of animals on these camera traps which was really cool to see however some of the more important Wetland species such as birds and phibians and voles are very hard to film like this so over the next few days

I decided to explore the Wetland calmly by myself to see the more distant parts and to try to find some of the wildlife okay here we go we are now getting into the thick of this Wetland and um I have to say I'm a little bit uh concerned okay well maybe concerned is a big word I'm um I'm mindful I'm a little bit mindful of the big mama boore that we saw on the cameras that sigy picked up yesterday uh I would not want to get uh on the wrong uh side of that uh mama boore if I get too close so I'll be making a bit of noise I think as I move through this Wetland which might scare the birds but I'd rather see nothing than see one of those bore up close as I walked into this place into this Maze of plants and water I

must say that it genuinely felt like I was walking into a wild area it is the same feeling you get when walking in the Amazon rainforest or when diving on a wonderful tropical coral reef it just feels wild and to me that matters a lot exploring this kind of place is always very exciting and clearly distinct from other places that we as humans can't help but control and regulate tightly it leaves me with this nervous excitement that is hard to describe the kind of feeling that you only get in a wild area like this you just observe things more closely and you never know what might just be around the corner somehow the potential feels bigger which makes this whole place feel bigger than it actually

is it makes it feel deeper and richer in experiences and opportunity that's why I work hard restoring nature and thankfully I'm not alone me and Matt started musier 7 years ago and have slowly built a team that also shares our values including our own Rew Wilding teams in four different countries each one trying to save one of these magical places and it is also what allows us to support amazing Partners like bras that fight hard to bring back doomed places like this and this is all only made possible by our amazing Mossy Earth members that support this work that directly with a monthly contribution we don't have large sponsors there's no huge company or huge donor running the show we have no debt and we have no investors asking for

results all we have is you watching this video and others like you that care about these places and want to see them restored and protected that sounds like something you'd like to support and please consider joining us at moss. Earth every bit helps and um if you're not ready to uh become a member then please consider subscribing to the channel here on YouTube I know that only well less than half of you are subscribed to the channel and I think it would send a really positive strong signal to YouTube if you did subscribe it's a free way to help so please consider doing so if you enjoy our content okay now um yeah time to go explore this Wetland and uh hope that Mama boore doesn't find us so as you can see

this area here is already looking a lot like a wetland and that is because it is already a wetland and it has been a wetland in the past I'm surrounded by Wetland plant species that is because this area here used to flood a few times per year for a few months and that is enough to uh to allow these plants here to thrive and the other plants not to and what we are doing essentially by connecting the Chili's Brook to this place is to supercharge to help expand this Wetland so that it can you know accommodate more Wildlife more Wetland species and that we can create a little bit more of this really rare habitat based on our calculations there were around 10 hectar here that would flood a

few times per year mostly in these two depressions here and here with this intervention we hope to turn that into 40 hectares of wetland that has water year round Now by doing so we've clearly made a decision here to prioritize having more of this than native Wetland habitat and less of this the fields of invasive species and I think it's always important to justify this clearly so let's start by looking at the problem we have with these fields the main species you see here are Asters namely the New York Aster and the L leaved Aster and as often is the case with invasives these species evolved in a completely different landscape these ones come from the American Northeast which has its own

checks and balances in place that allow these lovely plants to thrive in balance with the rest of the ecosystem however once they arrived in Europe many of those checks were not present and they were easily able to out compete native species in these mixed environments where water does not clearly dominate in the long run this reduces plant diversity of course but it also impacts all the different species that have evolved alongside these Wetlands over thousands of years risking their long-term populations as well here we have a huge field of asters so I think essentially this area wouldn't have been you know flooding on a regular basis um but now it does now it has permanent water in fact I'm you know standing in

water right now so um these will die and get slowly replaced by species that like water and that will be a very clear sign that we are successfully expanding this Wetland and creating additional habitat for these Wetland species because there is plenty of this around in this whole region but that over there is kind of rare and that's why this intervention matters I was really happy to see water here because it's the beginning of this whole transformation and for a sneak peek at what the future might hold I visited another Wetland last spring one that BR has also recreated using water from this Brook and this place looks amazing so this here where we are right now is actually what uh what we're

looking to recreate on the other side where we are directing the water from the Chili's Brook these are uh wet sge Meadows that uh sigy here has been working on for a few years now to try to create this really important and rare habitat that of course supports a variety of species but here is particularly targeted at the panonian root V now back in the new Wetland we are now creating we thankfully also have some sges that are ready to spread out when given the opportunity so those are the key changes we expect to see in this Wetland and we will be able to measure the progress by taking regular orthop photo mosaics with the Drone but what about the wildlife well I walked around the Wetland using the trails the animals

make and sometimes I could also catch a glimpse of an animal dashing away from me but I wasn't having much luck that is until this happened say there's really two areas here that are worth mentioning oh my God I'm looking at a root B holy I've been walking around here for 3 Days looking for wildlife all I've gotten was the ass of a Road Deer uh running away from me as fast as it could a few blurry Birds again running away from me as fast as it could and some of these uh you know uh Birds hunting in the distance and that's it that's all I've managed while it has been of course a pleasure to explore this I you know bit disappointed not to be able to see or film Wildlife properly and then this

animal the animal I would have liked to see the most top of the list for me just swims right across behind the camera I mean that was amazing so lucky and I got at least one photo that is reasonably sharp of it otherwise I'd be crushed so um yeah wow that was very cool now having had some time to look at these images and having shown them to the bras team I've come to think that maybe this is a common rotv and not the panonian rotv I was hoping for however identifying such a small animal from a photo like this is quite hard so let's just say for my sake that this is the one and only Mikus economus Meli that we work so hard to save in these Wetlands so yeah really stoked to see this flooded it is something I've been

waiting for a while and I above all I'm really excited to see how it's going to progress it's uh it's this kind of transformational side of these Wetland projects that is yeah really exciting to see but uh yeah again a huge thank you to all the mossy Earth members who made this possible and if you're not yet a member then please consider joining us at moss. Earth it's uh it's amazing that you enable us to do this until next time cheers