En 2009, le Vermont avait $6 millions à investir pour restaurer les milieux humides, mais n'a pu dépenser que $1,5 millions. La date limite pour soumettre les travaux ou perdre les fonds est le premier mars. On essaye de convaincre les agriculteurs dans le bassin versant de la Baie Missisquoi d'embarquer, mais les programmes gouvernementaux ne sont pas très populaires dans cette tranche de la population.
C'est décevant, puisque les milieux humides servent d'éponges et de reins, pour filtrer les sédiments et les nutriments qui se déposent pour que les plantes des zones humides peuvent s'en nourrir. Ces zones servent aussi de tampons pour ralentir le ruissellement lors des pluies abondantes, encaissant la majorité des dégâts d'une innondation.
Les milieux humides avaient été originalement asséchés pour servir de pâturage ou de terres à foin lorsque la demande était très forte, mais depuis les quelques dernières années humides et pluvieuses, la plupart de ces terres qui sont retournées à leur mission originale servent de points de ravitaillement à la sauvagine et d'endroits de fraie pour plusieurs poissons.
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"Government, nonprofits move to restore wetlands
An unusual public-private coalition is on a search for landowners willing to turn their marginal, boggy farm fields back into wetlands. Time is running out, at least for this year. By March 1, the Vermont office of the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service must commit up to $2.5 million to wetlands restoration, or lose access to the money. In 2009, the local office was able to use only $1.5 million of the $6 million available to it.
Ducks Unlimited, the hunting and conservation group, is helping with outreach to farmers. Wetlands near Lake Champlain provide important stopping places for migrating geese and ducks. Friends of Northern Lake Champlain, a Franklin County group, is talking to farmers in the Missisquoi Bay watershed. Wetlands play an important role in protecting and improving water quality. Both private groups have funding from Clean and Clear, the state government program dedicated to reducing fertilizer pollution that drives algae blooms and weed growth in Lake Champlain.
"Wetlands are a giant environmental sponge," Clean and Clear Director Julie Moore said Monday. "They are a sink, where sediment and nutrients can be deposited and taken up by wetland plants." Wetlands also trap water after storms, slowing down the floods that erode streambanks and further contribute to nutrient pollution.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced last week it is adding a technical specialist whose job will be to design the changes needed on a piece of land to allow it to revert to wetlands. Wetlands along some rivers provide spawning grounds for northern pike and other fish. The federal Wetlands Reserve Program pays landowners an average of just under $1,200 an acre for a permanent easement to turn fields back into wetlands. The program also pays the cost of restoration.
Land in the program tends to be low-lying, along the edge of rivers like Otter Creek and its tributaries. Once, the land was floodplain forest or swamp. In the heyday of agriculture, farmers ditched and drained the swamps to create land for corn and hay.Trouble is, a lot of that land wants to be wet, still frequently floods and is marginal for crop production.
The Wetlands Reserve Program has been around in Vermont since 1998, but until last year it was a tiny program, spending about $200,000 on a couple of projects a year. In 10 years, the program restored 1,700 acres of wetlands."
Excerpts of article written by Candace Page published in burlingtonfreepress.com here: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20100207/NEWS03/2070305
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