The good folks at Mossy Earth are flooding a forest in Slovakia, and it’s to protect the environment. You might think that flooding a forest would be a bad thing since we need forests to store carbon and clean the air; however, wetlands are far better at storing carbon than forests. Wetlands are wonderful for carbon capture and are even better as a habitat for many at-risk species. Whenever possible, we need to protect our wetlands (if you’re in Ontario let your anti-wetland Conservative MPP know you want wetlands saved).
This ambitious project aims to restore an area of degraded wetland by digging water channels that will reconnect the site to a nearby river. These channels will enable water to travel from the river to the core area of the wetland and restore a more beneficial flooding regime. The project will also remove encroaching woody vegetation that is outcompeting the native wetland plant communities.
Over time this intervention will:
- create suitable conditions for the regeneration of the wetland plant communities;
- suppress the expansion of non-native plant species;
- create suitable habitat for a diversity of invertebrates, amphibians, birds and mammals;
- and finally, sequester vast amounts of carbon.
Within the next two years, we will be supporting our partners Broz to create 650 meters of water channels to restore a 64ha wetland.