Close Encounters of the Swamp Kind

"Dreary and wearisome. Cold, clammy winter still held sway in this forsaken country. The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark greasy surfaces of the sullen waters. Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed up in the mists like ragged shadows of long forgotten summers." This was the landscape of the Dead Marshes that Frodo and Samwise had to pass through on their way to Mordor. A place where Frodo encountered the "candles of corpses" in Middle Earth.  From the moors of Wuthering Heights to the dangerous Grimpen Mire of The Hound of Baskervilles, marshes have always had a bad rap and have often been used to create "atmosphere" for fantastical stories. Re-christened as "wetlands" they are being rehabilitated into the human imagination. As the writer Tom Blass says "wetland is a good, clean healthful post-superstitious word. But a more archaic taxonomy using marsh, bog, fen fenny and quagmire says more about our experience of such places before ready access to insect repellent, boardwalks and nature trails robbed them of their mystery." 

These meditations on wetlands are a  result of my visit to the Kendal Frost Marsh yesterday as part of the annual Love Your Wetlands Day (LYWD). As I sat down to record my oral history at the event I was suddenly overcome with nostalgia. This was my 12th LYWD and the third without my daughter who now goes to college in the North East. She fell in love with the marsh when she was 8. Wearing the long boots, crisscrossing the water channels, and letting her legs sink into the mud, she thought it was the greatest adventure! Over time she became a docent for the marsh and before leaving home led tours of the marsh during LYWD. As I recounted this story for the oral history project I realized how often the cultural and spiritual value of places is overlooked and I got a momentary insight into the long association the local Kumeyaay have had with these wetlands and how important their stories are. At the event we also heard from a young researcher studying the Tijuana estuary. She talked about how swamps in the South East have sheltered her ancestors as they escaped from slavery and were seen as a place of refuge from the so called civilized world.

However, from our first President to our current one, from Julius Caesar to Saddam Hussein men have always wanted to "drain the swamp", many literally and some figuratively.  As Blass says, there is always someone with a scheme to "drain it, pluck from it its riches and return it to the world settled, compliant, well ordered (or non existent)." It is no wonder that 90% of wetlands have been lost in the last 300 years, 35% since 1970 (most numbers I quote are from Parth Dasgupta's Economics of Biodiversity). 

Wetlands do wonders for the biosphere. In broad terms they offer three distinct services:

1. Provisioning Goods - things we get from the ecosystem. Could be food, wood, medicinal plants etc
2. Maintenance & Regulating Services - controlling erosion, flood management, carbon sequestration
3. Cultural Services - spiritual connection to the land, recreation opportunities, social relationships

These things are intricately bound to each other and have real impact on our lives. Dasgupta notes that the wetlands reduced flood damages from Hurricane Sandy by $625M. It is estimated that the insurance industry could save $52B a year through reduced losses by protecting coastal wetlands. Nature based infrastructure projects are also estimated to create an additional 4 million jobs by 2030. While quantifying the positive impact of wetlands and other ecosystems can help us value the "natural capital" Dasgupta warns that there are critical differences between natural and produced capital. 

 Damages to ecosystem can be irreversible, they can collapse abruptly, and it is very hard to replicate a degraded ecosystem. A healthy ecosystem is dependent on biodiversity and to preserve biodiversity we need habitat conservation. In some cases focusing on keystone species or charismatic species has led to habitat protection but very often focusing on habitat protection will lead to conservation of non charismatic species and even those species that are currently not accounted for.

Which is why yesterday's LYWD was so inspiring! San Diego's ReWild Coalition has been at the forefront of making sure our last remaining pocket of wetlands in Mission Bay are restored and expanded. A restored wetland would help our city face the challenges from climate change and sea level rise and also provide opportunities for San Diegans to forge a cultural and natural connection with this ecosystem. Just as biodiversity is critical to the health of an ecosystem a diverse coalition of stakeholders is critical to the mission at hand. I met groups trying to keep tobacco product waste from entering the wetlands of Mission Bay, I talked to a young researcher from Baja working to re-introduce the California red-legged frog (a non charismatic species) into the wetlands of Southern California and groups like the Climate Science Alliance working to integrate indigenous knowledge and participation in climate adaptation planning and stewardship. Sometimes the daily news cycle can make one lose hope or feel very overwhelmed. Wandering around the wetlands yesterday I felt re-energized. 

I wanted to close with a different image of a swamp from the greatest TV show ever (at least according to me). Every summer my daughter and I watch The Last Airbender  (the original) from start to finish and I must've watched the show with her at least a dozen times. Unlike Frodo, Avatar Aang has a very different experience when he and his friends get pulled into the Foggy Swamp of the Earth Kingdom. Initially spooked by the mystical visions and the mysterious swamp bending tribes, the Avatar realizes that he has a lot to learn from the swamp.  And it is amazing that the wisdom is revealed to him by a Banyan-Grove tree (death and life intertwined) which shows him that the swamp is just one big living organism and "if you listen hard enough you will hear every living thing breathe together." Now that's some Hindu/Buddhist/ Transcendental swamp wisdom I can get behind completely!