Center For The Inland Bays

Bringing Back The Bays

Can we turn back the clock and restore the Inland Bays to their once-pristine glory? Well, maybe not in a day or even a year, but the Center for the Inland Bays embraces the idea of restoring the natural environment when and where we can.

The Center's reforestation effort at the James Farm Ecological Preserve is an attempt to extend the mature forest that exists there. As many as 8,000 trees will be planted in the reforestation project, resulting in a larger tract of contiguous hardwood forest that will support migratory songbirds and other animals that require such habitats.

The CIB has funded a project to restore underwater grasses at various sites in Indian River and Rehoboth Bays. Eelgrass (Zostera marina) has been harvested from the waters of Chincoteague Bay, Virginia, and transplanted into the Inland Bays. Although some of the newly-planted grasses have struggled, the project has demonstrated that natural reproduction of eelgrass is occurring for the first time in nearly 40 years.

The Center promotes restoration even on a small scale - for example, at Pasture Point on the James Farm property, the Center plans to stabilize the eroding shoreline to protect the sandy beach, which is critical spawning habitat for horseshoe crabs.

Habitat Protection, Restoration, And Enhancement In The Inland Bays

by Eric Buehl, Habitat Coordinator

CURRENT STATUS

The Delaware Inland Bays Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) identifies numerous problems and possible solutions to the loss of much needed habitat in the watershed. Tactics in the CCMP range from practices and techniques as simple and inexpensive as reforestation and the use of buffers, to the very complex and expensive, such as public acquisition of land.

Working hard to make habitat protection and restoration in the area a success are a variety of private, local, state, and federal agencies and organizations working together to protect and restore the Inland Bays. These groups are well aware of the complexities and costs behind any project in the watershed and include public agencies such as the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFW), the many Divisions within the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC), the Delaware Department of Agriculture, and the Sussex Conservation District. Private organizations are also active in the watershed and include The Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited, the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation, and the Sussex County Land Trust.

A variety of programs have been developed over the years to assist landowners in protecting open space areas, to enhance existing upland wildlife habitat areas, to better our water quality, and to restore wetlands. Rather than compete for landowners and individual projects, quite often resources from different programs are often combined to accommodate both the landowner's desires and the goals of each restoration program. For example, State wildlife habitat enhancement funds might be used to pay for upland wildlife habitat creation, such as tree and grass plantings, while Federal wetland restoration funds might be used to restore degraded wetlands onsite. Program funding sources, requirements, and goals can vary from NRCS, DNREC's Landowner Incentive and Quail Habitat restoration programs, and the USFW's Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, to work by private groups such as the Center for the Inland Bays, The Nature Conservancy, and the Sussex County Land Trust.

CHALLENGES

Natural, well-functioning systems are vital to the health of an estuary and are comprised of free-flowing streams, unaltered floodplains, wide riparian (wooded) areas, and large unbroken tracts of native hardwood and mixed forests. Functioning forested areas along streams and all the smaller organisms they support are needed to help cycle nutrients from one form to another, making them available for plants and other micro-organisms or to become food themselves, creating a diverse and healthy food chain. These stream-side ecosystems also help to regulate the flow of water in streams and rivers, reducing flooding and providing water during times of drought. They also assure abundant food and shelter for numerous small animals, insects, and migratory birds that may come to nest or simply feed in southeastern Sussex on their way to their seasonal nesting grounds.

Unfortunately, habitat restoration in the Inland Bays watershed becomes more difficult and expensive with each passing day. As land-use patterns and individual land ethics change, it becomes harder to protect or restore larger areas with a goal of making them more productive and beneficial to water quality and animals, including humans, who depend upon the plants, the land, and the waters that help support their existence.

The concept of ecosystem-based restoration is not a new one and involves a variety of restoration techniques that address the many stressors affecting the land. This landscape-scale approach seeks to restore habitat for all organisms, both large and small, creating more balanced populations both up and down the food chain. Due to local constraints, large size landscape-scale projects are difficult to find in the Inland Bays as land is subdivided into smaller and smaller parcels, converted from open space to housing and commercial development, thereby fragmenting wooded areas (separating them from larger tracts of woods) and altering the hydrology (flow of water).

Other complicating factors to large-scale restoration projects are the value of land and the size of a project. Due to the dizzying upward spiral of local land values, many landowners are reluctant to tie up their land in a long-term restoration project when there is a strong temptation to sell the land for development purposes. The complexity of a protection, restoration, or enhancement project also increases with the number of individual landowners involved, as each has their own goals and ideas.

OPPORTUNITIES

Forests and wetlands make up much of the remaining natural open space areas in the Inland Bays watershed. From a human perspective, these areas provide many services at no cost such as: flood control; nutrient cycling; the production of food, fuel, and fiber; and areas to recreate and watch wildlife. From an animal's perspective, these areas provide: temporary or permanent shelter; food; an area to rest; or much needed materials to make a shelter or nest. To help protect and restore these vital areas, a variety of land protection and habitat restoration or enhancement projects have been completed in the Inland Bays watershed. They include: tidal and non-tidal wetland restoration, creation, and enhancement; reforestation; wooded and native grass buffers on streams and ditches; upland habitat creation and enhancement; the control of non-native invasive plant species; agricultural land and forest preservation; and the purchase of land for public access.

The Center for the Inland Bays has taken an active on many projects in the watershed and will continue to work closely with the many public and private interests working to restore and protect habitat. On a very local level, recent projects involving Center for the Inland Bays' staff and partner agencies have included the creation of an oyster reef, the development of an oyster gardening program, restoring underwater Eelgrass beds, a non-tidal wetland project, reforestation and warm-season native grass/wildflower meadow work at the James Farm Ecological Preserve, poultry farm buffers, and the Millsboro Pond Dam Eelway.

Future projects the Center will be emphasizing are continued reforestation, the increased use of wooded and native grass buffers, tidal and non-tidal wetland restoration, non-structural shoreline stabilization, conservation easements, and stream channel restoration. And for subdivision and small lot owners looking to do their part, the Center will continue to demonstrate the value of using native plants in landscaping and backyard gardening projects throughout the watershed.

The success of these important projects and many others will depend upon the creativity of willing landowners who can see the benefits of protecting, restoring, and enhancing the land and water for current and future generations.

"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see the land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." ~ Aldo Leopold, March 4, 1948

GO BACK

Jim Alderman

Restoration Coordinator
restoration@inlandbays.org

Eric Buehl

Habitat Coordinator
habitat@inlandbays.org

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