How Now Green Cow
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There’s a tiny prairie oasis hidden away on Ward Middleton’s farm just north of Morinville.
Years ago, Middleton said his father had a slough on the farm, and every time he rolled past it, he would see the coyotes gobbling up the ducklings on the shore. His father decided to turn the slough into a wetland with islands for the ducks.
“It’s like there’s this little natural ecosystem oasis on our farm,” Middleton said, one that has brought him and his family much enjoyment.
Late November, Middleton said he teamed up with Sturgeon County to restore four acres of wetland on his farm.
“Right now it is a big hole,” he said of the new wetland, but in the years ahead it will be insurance against the floods, droughts, and fires made more likely by global heating.
“I’m hoping this [wetland] becomes a larger version [of the one my father made] in my lifetime.”
Why wetlands
About 70 per cent of the wetlands in the Sturgeon River watershed were drained in the last century to make way for farms and cities, reports the North Saskatchewan Watershed Alliance. As wetlands act as natural sponges, this has made the region more vulnerable to flash floods and erosion from extreme weather events such as those made more likely by global heating.
Restoring drained wetlands fights floods, improves water quality and groundwater recharge, and creates animal habitat, said Sturgeon County conservation program co-ordinator Christine Downing.
Research suggests many wetlands drained and converted to farmland tend to stay wet anyway, resulting in sub-par growth and high costs, said Thorsten Hebben, director of operations for Ducks Unlimited Canada in Alberta. Let them flood again (which can be as simple as plugging a ditch), and you create water sources and micro-climates that support crops around them during droughts.
Downing said wetlands can protect against wildfires that are more likely under hot, dry conditions. Hebben said many of the wetlands Ducks Unlimited created in northern Alberta were vital water sources for firefighters last year.
Hebben said healthy wetlands trap organic matter and act as carbon sinks, slowing global heating. If they go dry or get tilled for crops, though, they release that carbon and accelerate heating.
How to get wet
Downing said the best candidates for wetland restoration on a farm are troublesome, less-productive areas that were previously drained — you don’t want to take good farmland out of circulation, if possible.
Middleton said his restored wetland was an oft-flooded area his family gave up on draining about a decade ago. Restoring this area should not only give him emergency water for his cows during droughts, but should also encourage waterfowl to nest here instead of in the middle of his crops — he had to hold off on seeding one square in his fields last year for weeks because of a goose on eggs.
Middleton said he held off on restoring this wetland on his farm for many years because of the cost, which he pegged at about $150,000. Working with Downing, he learned he could fund this project through the province’s Wetland Replacement Program, which is a fund companies pay into whenever they destroy wetlands. The program funded the wetland’s design, construction, and maintenance; all he has to do now is not farm it for 10 years, after which it will be considered a protected wetland under the Water Act.
Downing said the county has so far restored about three wetlands through the Wetland Replacement Program and planned to do one a year going forward.
Farmers can make money off their restored wetlands through Ducks Unlimited Canada’s Wetland Restoration Lease Program, which sees Ducks pay landowners fair market rates for their wetlands over 10 years, Hebben noted. Ducks has restored some 4,300 acres of wetland in Canada through these and other programs since 2019.
Middleton encouraged farmers to look into wetland restoration as stewards of the land.
“It’s the right thing to do.”
Questions on farms and wetland restoration in Sturgeon County should go to Agriculture Services at 780-939-8349.
