How a Man-Made Lake Became a Haven for Carnivorous Plants and Wildlife

last year we created a new Lake along with a dozen other Wetland features all in an effort to improve the conditions of this abandoned Quarry and to turn it into a sanctuary for wildlife and one year later the results are fascinating this place is just teeming with life there's it's full of aquatic plants in the new wet habitats there are frogs singing there are baby salamanders in the water there are dragon flies in the air and overall it's just this feeling especially in this season right now that life is booming here it's wow it's it's just incredible to see this transformation in such a short period of time today I want to show you four very interesting places as well as the new and unique species that we found in each

one two of these areas we transformed with last year's interventions and then there are two new areas which we are investigating for the first time this year to see if they need some work including the desolate Big Blue Lake and these mysterious Twin Ponds which somehow have completely different habitats but before we get into that let's quickly recap the timeline of this project in 2021 this abandoned Quarry changed owners and was put under the management of our good friends at Rew Wilding Portugal then the next year was spent on cleanups and surveys including some very useful Edna sampling which we supported this helped inform the Earth movements which started in the fall of 2022 and were done by the spring of 2023

and these new areas were created as a reminder the two main goals of this work were to increase the size and variety of the flooded areas to essentially expand this rare Wetland habitat and to hold water here for longer during the dry seasons and to understand whether we have achieved our aims the best thing is to go up high and take a look at the bigger picture so we're here at the Quarry and we're going to be doing some drone mapping uh to see what areas are are flooding and any changes that might be happening to the vegetation so yeah let's get the Drone up in the air Thiago programmed the Drone to take hundreds of photos which he then stitches together in a single picture and over time we can see a lot of change

this was the original state of things in 2022 and these are the areas we intervene to block water which runs in this general direction and this was the immediate aftermath of the interventions a very different landscape so before we started our project this uh whole area here was completely dry it was pretty Barren and we then created this uh barrier pretty much you know where I'm standing on more or less and Water started to accumulate here but it was still kind of bald there were no plants no vegetation but as you can see right now it's just teeming with aquatic plants that are creating this lovely three-dimensional habitat then came the new area we've been calling a lake as well as all of this water which accumulated here and here really

increasing the water level in some parts here behind me we can see a bit of a tree graveyard because all of these Willows used to line the previous water course because of course Willows love water but when eventually this area flooded and the water became permanent it became year round the Willows started to die because they don't like to be Underwater All Year and that was expected it's a consequence of our work so we're not it was not a surprise and it's not a negative consequence of the work either because all along the shore here new Young Willows are already popping up and they'll eventually dominate this much like they were dominating the previous Shoreline as well and finally some of this water

floods this flatter area off to the side and here on the other side of the barrier we have the temporary part of all of these temporary ponds and it's really interesting to see so this area here would have been flooded a few weeks ago when the water level was at its highest cuz it still has some plants that are s some aquatic plants that are Clinging On and then we have uh this little Pond here which is still full of water and disconnected from the main area so for the First full year after the interventions we can say that the flooding objectives have been met but the impact this has on the ground can be harder to measure which is why the team at reing Portugal continues

to monitor all of the wildlife that uses this place by conducting regular surveys the idea here is not only to register as much of the existing biodiversity as possible but also to be able to comp to compare in sub subsequent years the changes that we see that's why some of these transits are focused in the areas that we are doing more active work in so we can see that if our conservation actions will be successful or not and they found a lot of very interesting species to add to the list of this repository of biodiversity but one crucial piece of the puzzle was still missing the aquatic plant life which is where Claudia and Udo come into the picture they are a Botanical power couple that we connected with for our

work in the south of Portugal in the Mira Basin so we contracted the to come and Survey the Quarry focusing specifically on all the interesting aquatic plants the vetland environment is a place where we have some times with a lot of water and sometimes with less water so a lot of plants are adapted to this special uh regime of water and no water or less water where I am here water has disappeared and we see a plant which is called Elum forming a type of carpet and it's flowering the white things is are the flowers the green are the leaves and you see it's making a carpet on more or less dry land but when we have an environment on side where we still have water as you can see because

my valleys are getting very wet the plant is able to thrive as well and flowering it's living and the whole carpet is lifted up by the water and can swim to help them search for the plants they also brought along Jael who is familiar with pretty much every aquatic plant in Portugal and with this crack team assembled they started by surveying this beautiful new area we created and which we actually have not featured in these videos yet it is over here on the opposite end of the Quarry and only has a minor Intervention which was essentially blocking a ditch here allowing a lot more water to accumulate but the results were fantastic this created a lovely wet Meadow full of life for a lot of people this is a puddle

a pot of water and some weed no it is full of life and uh full of biodiversity we had a great time finding all sorts of different aquatic plants that have made this their home and it was also really nice to see all the dragon flies flying about and the various frogs such as this Iberian tree frog taking advantage of the vegetation to hunt for insects it just baffles me sometimes what uh a little bit of extra work can do to really bring a place to life to bring a little bit extra opportunity for nature and these wet Meadows here are the product of that effort it's yeah wellow it's truly special rewarding displays has been a real team effort you have re Wilding Portugal that has been working in this region for years and identifi this place

as a unique opportunity and then they managed to find someone with vision who bought the land and let them manage it for biodiversity's sake and then there's us we've been able to come in with additional funding for these interventions and if you're a MTH member you're are part of this chain you're part of this work this is one of the many wonderful Wetland habitats that you've helped create with the more or less 40,000 that we have spent here so far and if you're not yet a member but you like what you see then please consider joining us with a monthly subscription at Mossy do earth it is truly what makes it all possible our Coral restoration work our River Rew Wilding projects are seagrass and oyster

restoration efforts and even the land we are protecting and reing with local indigenous communities in the Amazon rainforest you can learn more about it here on this YouTube channel and when you've seen enough to consider joining us you can do so at moss. Earth now the work that this team is doing here extends further than just cataloging we think we found something that is new to science which Udo was really Keen for me to film see these starlike uh leaves coming up this is the one the Gallum I showed you flowering over there and told you that we have discovered it can be a hydropi and here you have it was quite hard to film them in amongst all the dense aquatic plant life but here it is this is the first record that we are aware of

of Gallum deil flowering underwater pretty cool stuff and this is one of the many interesting findings that Claudia Udo and JL made here in total they were able to catalog 94 species of aquatic plant including seven rare species one of which was not seen in Portugal since 1942 as well as three red listed species two of which we found in the mysterious Twin Ponds we've been wanting to investigate so I went in for a dive to bring back some samples and also to have a look around the pond you see on your right side is dark and full of nutrients and diving in it felt like quite the haunting experience because there is very little light down there and the water was also cooler because of the low

light penetration while the other Pond is bright and clear the aquatic plants form this forest-like habitat full of these lovely marbled nudes taking advantage of this place to hunt and to grow but crucially for us this place was also full of rare plants which have adapted specifically to live in these nutrient poor Waters we have lurella uniflora which is an infus Shore weed capable of living in and out of the water and then we have utricularia Australis or the less appealing name of Southern bladder wart and this plant strategy is completely different it has no roots and floats ground sometimes getting stuck in other vegetation this means that it gets no nutrients from the ground but has instead adapted to get

its nourishment by catching little animals yes this is a carnivorous plant that catches small creatures using vacuum bladders activated by small contact hairs the Trap is an opening and the vacuum which was in is filling with water and the Plankton the zoo Plankton is caught by the plant this one has eaten something because you see when the traps are dark they have had an success what a great find and when you put it into context of the known distribution of this plant it is a very unique result as it is by far the most Inland record of the species in the country it is absolutely fascinating yeah I can imagine why you know was saying you could do a doctorate hydrobiology doctorate here because every single bond is just different from the next have so

many different situations with uh different conditions like in the geological underground but as well uh different forms different um yeah because of the excavation it is manmade habited but now nature is coming to occupy this the place and depending of possibilities it have has a different expression different approach yeah and all this Botanical goodness can be found in the uh 55 page report that uh Udo and Claudia wrote uh about these surveys um and I've been using it to make this video as accurately as I can and uh yeah if you're a member then you will be able to access this in your account but we also wanted to take a look at another area where we knew things would probably be quite different this is what we call

the Big Blue Lake and as it is indeed quite big Udo and Claudia organized for a team of divers to join us in order to collect the samples more easily but after deploying the ROV it quickly became clear that we did not need to go very deep to find our answers 2.4 M Max 2.4 M Max bottom plat full of mud After experiencing the wet Meadow and the ponds this place felt like a sad desert punctuated by the occasional cloud of silt kicking up from the bottom and of course I had my suspicions of what this might be and on the walls I found what I was looking for these holes are home to the Louisiana crayfish or as they would call it in Louisiana crawfish and I'm sure these are lovely animals in that distant place where they come from

but here they're an invasive species and they're a pain to deal with they are certainly one of the factors which keep this whole area in an early stage of succession as the only thing we found at the bottom were macro algae but after Jael and the divers completed their surveys we did find another red-listed species living on the edges of the lake called poon tries commonly known as hairlike pondweed this was a nice Silver Lining but this grayfish problem is serious and it also extends to some of the areas we are trying to restore so here you can uh well and truly uh see the uh crayfish Invasion that we have here just along this um this Shoreline here we can see I don't know 100 200

crayfish just openly chilling I don't like I think they could be more aggressive like they're not like grabbing on so tightly like I think they're strong so they're just you think they're just checking out your finger yeah I think so giving you a handshake giving me a handshake well nice that they are friendly but maybe they could get out of here yeah maybe they could go back to where they came from and in this area here you can see a place where expanding the water has led to an unwanted Consequence the destruction of these ponds by fish and crayfish that are present in the larger body of water the animal especially the fish probably entered here and the crayfish as well and the result is a huge degradation in this point

so not every intervention has always the that's what happens also sometimes when you intervene you also yeah yes it happens can have negative results what I can't say if it was planned to take away part of the D or accidental yeah luckily we do have some nice before and after photos which allow us to do some forensic work looking at this I am quite sure that the connection came about because of the extra flooding caused by the barrier built at the bottom of this large area which blocked a lot more water helping flood all of these areas to create a smoother profile which is nice but also flooding the pawns which existed here so based on my conversations with Udo and Claudia and the Rew Wilding Portugal team I think I

can confidently rate the results of our interventions as follows the wet Meadow creation and expansion was a resounding success the shallow water here and the lake have attracted a lot of biodiversity and we even found the carnivorous plant growing in the lake area which is really exciting and the only other place where we found it besides the twin pawns so this place gets a positive grade as well then the regular flooding of this area here creating the temporary pawns is also positive as is the smoothing of the profile here creating a gradient of opportunity with different depths and then we have the negative result over here with the destruction of the ephemeral pond it's very good what you have done here the grayfish yes is a problem on the other side we know that

the otter and uh and bigger um uh birds like herens and stalks are hunting crayfish and we should as well because they are very delicious dinner yes and it's really reing dinner and I can tell you what you have to do with a trap because when you use the stockings uh from nylon what the ladies have and then you put in uh the stockfish the Portuguese stockfish I think it's stock fish in English and then you put some honey mhm and then at uh at dawn or no at night you place it in the water and then comes the crayfish because he's mad for stockfish and with his scissors he will stick in the stockings and then you can you lift it up and you have your dinner off graay fish wow it's working maybe next time in the

quy that we uh cook some invasive crayfish dinner I mean this pondscape just never ceases to amaze me what a special weird and wonderful place that we have here and it's above all really cool that with a few small interventions we were able to enhance it I'm really pleased to see the results of our interventions and also really happy that we get Udo Claudia and Jael to come and have a look at the aquatic plant life to validate our work it's uh it's really important and we'll of course continue informing the next steps of the work but uh for now I just want to say as usual a huge thank you to our members that enabled us to do this kind of work and if you're not yet a member then please consider

becoming one at moss. Earth we do all sorts of really cool Rew Wilding projects similar to this one and I think you're going to have fun but above all with just a small amount every month you'll be having a real positive impact and I think that's that's really amazing so again a big thank you to you all until next time cheers