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We are reviving this ancient Icelandic wetland by closing these man-made drainage ditches and allowing the water back into its natural meandering flow. And by doing so, we will be reconnecting the various lakes and streams of this wetland, allowing the fish and critically endangered eels to move freely once more. We'll be supporting all kinds of wonderful birds by creating more habitat and more prey for them. and we will be rewetting the allimportant petlet, stopping it from drying out and supporting the mix of plants and mosses that form this habitat. This project really has a bit of everything that makes wetlands special. It has the water, the wet petlands, the lakes, and
the streams that flow out to sea. And it mixes all of that with the migratory fish dynamics and the amazing bird habitat. And as far as I know, it's one of the first projects here in Iceland to combine all of these elements into a single project, which is always really exciting. But before we get to all of that goodness, I think we have to understand how we got into this mess to begin with. Channels we are looking to fix are unfortunately quite common in Iceland. A few were certainly excavated long ago as the island was settled. However, the vast majority were dug out in the 20th century. The objective was simple, to drain the water out of these large wet areas and create better
conditions for farming and grazing. This is a common thing in most countries. The bog, the wet meer or the fen is one of the first parts of the landscape that humans like to change. Here in Iceland, it really intensified after the Second World War. And that is how you end up with something like this. A ditch that is so deep that I can pretty much stand inside it. and that is draining this petland next to it and completely changing the hydraology of this wetland in a way that's negatively affecting the petland itself, the birds and also the migratory fish. So now as we uh explain the various interventions that we are going to undertake, I want to run through those three categories and explain how we're going to try to
improve things in each one. Let's start with the petland which is a rather unique type of wetland ecosystem where the partially decayed plant matter builds up in the waterlogged soil over thousands of years but does not decompose fully because of the low oxygen levels. The conditions here are ideal for the specially adapted wetland flora that lives in these wet soils such as mosses, sedges and grasses. But as you can imagine when you create the drainage channels things change. And to get a proper look at the problem, I joined Eid from Landon Forest Iceland as she was checking out the depth of the pete at various GPS points to help plan the restoration. This is something that is causing emissions.
Well, yeah, like some a wound like this, like an opening like this. But it's not really about the opening like because people uh also in the it's been a misunderstanding with like people that own the land uh farmers and other people that the emission comes from the ditch but it is out from the ditch just that it's dry. Yes. Okay. So when um you have two ditches close by, you can assume that the land between them is dry, you know, and the water level goes down and then it begins to uh release carbon. Understanding the problem really made clear to me just how bad these ditches are in that they don't just damage this here and all of this exposed ground, but this whole area. And in our project area, it is really easy
to see this. Yeah, we can probably take this and then we can do like this. Can you see difference? Wow. Is it visual? Oh, that's very clear. Yeah. So, this is the decomposed organic soil. And this is just organic soil in its wet state. Thankfully though, the solution is almost as simple as the ditch itself. If you dig a ditch to drain Pete, you can close a ditch to rewet it. And in this project, Edun will be closing more than 3 km worth of ditches in order to restore 216 hectares of petland, which is about 300 football fields. So, a really big area. And even
for you personally, just out of curiosity, why do you like to do this work of restoring wetlands? cuz I'm I grew up in this kind of area uh with lakes and petlands and birds and eels. I saw eels when I was young. Uh, and then I realized you can study something called restoration ecology and that means that I can fix nature and have an excavator because I'm also like a doer, you know? I love excavators, but I realized I could like work with the people that are like on the excavators and fixing the nature, not destroying it. Cuz normally when you see an excavator in the nature, it's destroying something. So, it's the perfect combination. That's a perfect question. Excavator world and nature. Yeah, that's a great
answer. That's as good an answer as I've ever heard. Yeah. Now, because this work overlaps with the fish migration, and the map for that looks like this, I want to start by focusing on two ditches as an example. Here near the road, we will be closing this Y-shaped ditch system that is draining these fields here and hopefully improving the conditions in this whole area up here. And here near this dirt road, we will be closing this L-shaped ditch which will force the water to rewet the nearby petland. So with this ditch here, we have an additional opportunity to do some learning because a student has actually come here and measured the emissions from the nearby degraded petland, which
means that when we fix it, we'll be able to measure it again and do a bit of a comparison. And I think it's quite important to keep on gathering these types of data to really show people the various reasons of why we should be fixing the petland. Closing this ditch here will allow the water to run in the old natural wiggly stream that still exists here. And you'll see that this project will have a lot of that when it comes to the fish part. But before we get to the streams, I want to show you what all of this should actually look like. Now, this is some really nice wet pete and a lot of this is wonderful spongy mossy earth. And uh I can't believe it has taken us 8 years, but we are finally
working together with the mosses to try and keep this area wet and to keep this particular type of ecosystem, this flora here, thriving in the right conditions with constant water. We're on the northern end of the East Atlantic flyway that connects Africa with the Arctic, making this a crucial place for all kinds of birds when it comes to breathing and migration. I think I understand why birds like this place. I mean, if I was a bird, I think I would like to come to a place like this because this is just a huge landscape of nests. is each one of these tufts of plants is so light and so like insulating. So, it's so easy to just
come in, you know, make a little nest right there and you're nice and secure and protected and uh at the same time you turn around, you fly a little bit and you got the ideal feeding opportunities. I mean, everything is here. It's like a bird hotel. One could spend a lifetime trying to document them all properly. And I would have certainly gotten massively sidetracked. But thankfully, my girlfriend Julia came along to help me film this. And while I was running around in ditches trying to make sense of this mess of a wetland, she kept busy by slowly and calmly documenting the bird life. So, here is what she found. One of the most obvious birds that you will find here are the whooper swans that we often observed walking the
petlands, always in pairs or on small islands with their chicks as they slowly coax them to go out into the world. You'll also quickly run into a wimbrel which is present here in vast numbers because around 30% of the world population comes here to breed. There also plenty of blacktailed godwits such as this one fee and bathing in one of the larger lakes. Then this is the symbol of Icelandic spring, the European golden clover. They feature in all kinds of poems about the arrival of spring. And the first annual sighting is eagerly reported on the news. And they're another bird that needs these places with about a third of the global population nesting here. And as I caught up with Julia, she managed to become
friends with one of these clovers by very slowly getting closer with the tripod until she really could take a close look. Thought it was fun to see how close you could get. You can get really close apparently. So, these ones just don't care. No. Did you film the little one over there as well? In this area, we also found what I believe to be Arctic skua, an endangered bird that acquires the majority of its food by robbing other birds. And they certainly didn't seem to have many friends around here, which makes sense. Further along in another lake, Julia found these cute young gull chicks bobbing about and then taking a rest on the shore. And of course, not too far off were the parents that followed us
around, alerting all the other birds to our presence. But despite them, we also saw greylac geese, ravens, arctic turns, meadow pippets, rock tarmaggan, barttailed godwits, malards, great northern and redthroated divers, red shanks, and gooseener or red- breasted morganzer. I'm not sure here. It's really hard to tell in this light because we ended up filming a lot of these birds at some strange hours. And let me share a learning here. It might be one that is rather obvious to you. Even though birds are usually busy at dawn, if dawn happens to be around 3:00 a.m., as it is here in Iceland, and if it happens to be rainy and windy, maybe calm the urge to run out of the door and drag your 6-month pregnant
girlfriend out of bed to slosh around in a wetland at 4°. Oh, it's piercing cold. Let's go. So, that was the lesson learned for me. But the key thing is that this place is full of life and Julia managed to capture a ton of it to show you. So, I'm really thankful for that. But actually, if you got here and saw no birds, you could still observe the landscape and know that they were around. So this here is another really interesting site because you can visualize that this is bird territory. So here behind me is a mound that has been formed really slowly over thousands of years by birds just sitting on this rock and taking a poo. And that biomass just slowly accumulates. And we have loads of these dotted around this
wetland which really shows that this is a place for birds. These bird hills were everywhere and I got to see them in use from time to time as a bird was making the most recent contribution to the pile. So I think for me it really drives home the point that this place is a bird paradise and their presence is really felt here. Now, before we go look at the connectivity of this wetland and at the streams that we are going to rewiggle, I would like to just say that the only reason we are able to close 3 km worth of ditches and recreate amazing thriving wetlands full of water, full of birds like this one here is because of our Mossy Earth members. people like me and you who make a small monthly
contribution to our projects and we then put all of this money together and can do really big things. I mean, we've set up our own rewalding teams in four different countries and they're getting on with tackling really big issues and making a amazing impact on the ground. And we're also picking really targeted partnership projects like this one here where we have these really sharp ideas on how to make the landscape wilder. So, if that sounds like something for you, then please consider becoming a member at mossy.ear. Every bit helps. And if that's a step too far for you right now, then please consider subscribing to the YouTube channel. It really helps as well. Now, let's go look at how we're going to
reconnect this wetland. The freshwater connectivity is a key aspect of this coastal wetland. And the problem we have here is that the erosion of the existing ditches is creating barriers for migratory fish and eel. So let's start by looking at what probably is our main protagonist here, the critically endangered European eel that has been declining significantly all over the continent. Their life cycle begins really far away as they spawn as larae in the Saraso Sea on the other side of the Atlantic. At this point, they slowly start drifting in the current towards Europe and develop as they go. This journey can take up to 3 years, which is incredible to imagine. And when they arrive here, they transform into glass eels and move into
the rivers and esties of the continent. As they grow, they turn yellow and become first elvers and then yellow eels. They will live up to 20 years here and then when they become mature they turn silver and begin their journey back to the Saraso Sea where they will spawn and die. Now as you can imagine with a life cycle like this they suffer from many pressures. There's the historical over fishing and now wildlife poaching. There is climate change altering the currents. There's pollution and crucially there are the migration barriers in eststeries and freshwater systems. And that is where Johannes from the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute comes in. He has been studying
these wetlands rather thoroughly using electro fishing to identify what species exist where. This is a practice that sends a small shock that momentarily stuns fish and eels and allows him to capture them with a net to record his findings. We joined him on one of these outings together with his colleague AA as they caught quite the collection which was really useful for us to see. You see the two wheels here. Oh, it went through. Yeah, that's how small it is. Yeah. So, these are like Wow. Yeah. You see, they haven't haven't got color all the way yet. So, they when they arrive they are called uh I think it's also glacial in
in English. Glacial. Yeah. In the end, we managed to get a good sample of the kinds of animals that live in the freshwater here. And to give you a glimpse of what that looks like, Johannes released some of these in front of my camera. There were these flounders of various sizes who camouflage neatly on the bottom waiting to ambush invertebrates as well as these small but pretty sticklebacks that were quite widespread throughout the whole area. So, this is a brown trout or sea trout par, probably a one-year-old. This trout decided to swim the other way, so no luck there. Then it was time to release the bigger eel that he caught. At this stage, this is probably still an el, the phase after the glass
eel. When he released it, I got to see just how fast one of these can disappear from sight into the mud and the aquatic plants, but it was still pretty cool to see. However, when it came to the release of one of the glass seals, we had this funny situation where it kept trying to hide under something. But that something was a flounder that seemed to really not want to be detected and it looked like it was not having a good time. But eventually the eel gave up and it found another spot to hide. Filming this, by the way, looks like this. We are in a sheep paddock from a nearby farmer and this water smelled funny. I mean, sometimes the stuff I do to get these shots for you is pretty
ridiculous. But moving on from that, this is the type of survey that has allowed Johannes to build this map, showcasing the mix of species in each of the points that he sampled. By combining this data with how the water flows, he has identified a series of barriers to migration, above which certain species are simply not present. So this here is the first barrier in the Calvale subcatchment and it's actually right here next to the highway. So it's a really busy place, but the obstacle itself, it's doesn't really look like much, but it prevents all the fish, the trout and the eel from getting to the really big lake that we have over there. And we know this because Johannes has done some electro fishing there to
check out what species are living there. And he found only stickleback. This area here will get rep-rofiled into step pools designed by a Scottish specialist called Hamish. Opening up this barrier will connect the lake with a really long stream that I tried to capture for you in a single shot. And when you get to the bottom of it, we arrive at our next intervention site. And it might be a bit difficult to spot, but this is the leftover of an ancient stream, an old stream that used to run through here, across that ditch that you see in the back there, and then through to the other side, continuing along these wetlands nice and slowly and meandering. But there's been this huge ditch that
has been dug right across the stream that has cut it in half. And that means that the water is behaving in a completely different way. So now we have this new kind of stream that's coming along here. And this would be more or less okay. But the moment that it joins with the channel because of the difference in height, you get this here. And this is obstacle number two, barrier number two to fish travel. And this one's pretty obvious. It's like a well. And the water that coming through here, some of it moves through to the side and is cutting this whole area off. And some of it is going underground and then coming out again inside the channel itself. So this is quite the big mess here. The solution
here will be to close this ditch above the meeting point between the stream and the ditch and to reprofile this into a smoother step pool. But from here onwards, we will be temporarily keeping the ditch open because it has some gravels which are currently being used by trout and other fish to spawn in. Then further down in the system, we also be closing up this ditch here that connects these two legs and that should allow the water to flow in a flatter stream once more. Now the blonde leor system is a bit different. Here we are restoring full connectivity. It is comprised of three lakes and a stream.
These legs at the top were restored a while back, but they were never reconnected properly by closing these ditches, which is why we still have barriers 9 and 10. And here we're actually going to do something a bit different as well. We are going to be closing this whole channel right here. And then we will be rewiggling the connection between these two legs. So, we'll be creating a stream, a nice beautiful wiggly stream that will be much more horizontal that will connect that big lake with this big lake in a much flatter way that allows fish, eels, everything to migrate up and down as they please and it will look a lot more like it used to. And then to bring back full connectivity, we have one obstacle
left. And it's a really special one because it's the last obstacle between those two big lakes and the sea. So all the migratory fish, all the eels that come from thousands of kilometers away, they come from the sea, they climb this whole wetland system and they get right up to here, but no further because of this obstacle. To me, the idea of breaking down this barrier that is blocking thousands of kilometers of uninterrupted water is really satisfying. Once more, we will be rewiggling the connection between these two legs according to the designs made by Hamish to create the ideal connection. And with every ditch that we are closing, Johannes will try to rescue as many fish and eels as possible using
electro fishing before we close them off. In total to get this work done, we will be spending €137,000 covering the closing of the 3,000 m of ditches, the rep-profiling of the four obstacles, and the re-wiggling of the streams, as well as all the design and monitoring associated with all of this, which I think makes this a really efficient project budget-wise. So, after spending a week here wrapping my mind around this project, visiting all the barriers and all the ditches in every corner of this wetland, I was just too curious to see what I could find underwater. So, on the last day at around 11 p.m., I went and put a camera in the water. And while I waited, I got to sit back in the golden light of the
Icelandic midnight with a bit of light rain in the background forming these wonderful rainbows. And I just stood there watching the turns hunt in this perfectly windstill lake that we want to rew. And it really hit me. These places that combine nature in so many forms. The birds, the fresh water, the wetlands. It's all so special and it is what gives color to life on this planet. At least to me. Back in the water, the scene was also spectacular. I was lucky enough to capture a lot of small brown trout swimming amongst the aquatic plants as well as a larger one that went by in a hurry. For me, it was really great to see these fish in their natural environment, in the golden light and the
shimmering rain of the Icelandic midnight. I think it really captures the uniqueness of this place and what we are working to save here. This is a really big project. I mean, it covers a huge wetland area, but also a broad range of issues from the migratory fish to the petland, the birds, everything. And it does all of that at a really reasonable price. And I think that's exactly what we are looking for in our partnership projects. We are looking for people like Edun and Johannes that have identified some really specific issues they want to solve and then we can come in and use our funding to maximize the potential impact and to fix really amazing places like this wetland that is raining on me
right now. So yeah, the only way that we can do this and we can do all our rewing projects, set up our rewing teams is because of our Mossy Earth members that support us with a monthly contribution. So if you're not yet a member, then please consider becoming one at mossy.ear. And if that's a step too far for you right now, then please consider subscribing to the YouTube channel. It's free, but it goes a long way in getting the word out. Until next time, cheers.
