For a few years I’ve watched this tiny trickle of water turn into a nice little creek with plenty of bends and falls and a little wetlands type area. It seems to be active a lot more than it used to be. Lots of animals stop and drink from it now and ive seen so many interesting plants and mushrooms pop up.
How do I support this little habitat? I’ve been picking plastic and glass out of it but little else. I read somewhere once you shouldnt disturb creeks too much. Should i fuck with introducing native plants/animals? or just let it be? I live in a temperate forest area if that matters.
I know it’s just some ditch runoff, probably from gutters around here, but Ive become attached to it in a weird way
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Try to get in touch with a local conservation group or native plant society. These types of projects are hyper local and they’ll be able to offer guidance.
@happybadger@hexbear.net this is a thread basically made for you to weigh in on
I saw it right after Abracadaniel posted and that pretty much summed up my take. Restoration ecology is so hyper-local that it works best when you have an expert telling you this is the right flower for a site 20 minutes away in a slightly different environment. The only thing I would add is to focus on getting greater degrees of protection for it. Working with a local conservation group can help remove all the invasive species and improve the site, but it’s protected from development and spraying when endangered species are present. Ideally the healthy creek turns into a healthy wetland that’s the eventual foundation for a bird sanctuary. The more trophic levels you can provide for in more ways, by building the right habitat and year-round food sources for that specific hyper-local environment, the better your chances of attracting a rare species.
Another way of bolstering that is to reach out to wildlife rehab places about it as a potential reintroduction site if it’s appropriate. Like SerialExperimentsGay said, introduce beavers (or the locally appropriate keystone species) and they’ll take care of the rest with the legal team of the local universities and government backing them. Here we have a chain of small protected wetlands stemming from local rehabbers releasing eagles that would then nest slightly further out from the previous releases. The waterways connecting those ponds are protected beaver habitat, the ponds themselves are bird sanctuaries, and the entire area is under the conscious stewardship of municipal ecologists. It’d otherwise be agricultural runoff ditches and suburbs.
introduce beavers, they will take care of the rest
If no local plant society, I would recommend learning how to identify invasive species and how to minimize their impact effectively and without herbicides as much as possible. For example, tree of heaven is easily identified by its leaf shape (similar to sumac) and smell when crushed (burning rubber) even when young. Easy to just pull out when they’re smaller than a couple inches tall, very difficult and basically requires stump killer after its first year
This is assuming you’re in north america
Thank you everyone who told me to reach out to local conservationists. I don’t know any but I will ask around and I also emailed a conservation ecology professor at my university to point me in the right direction.
Would it be possible to photograph without self-doxxing?
I don’t really want to risk it - I can try to describe it? What would you need to know?
I just wanted to soak in the vibes. I love the contrast of nature reclaiming human made areas
sounds like a cool spot. definitely go with what others have said about identifying and communicating with local conservation groups/resources.
i am struggling to think of a scenario where you wouldn’t want to remove plastic, glass, or other litter/trash, but i guess check and see. and figure out where you’re taking it.
lazy, meandering streams are so cool to watch. i (car brain) think of them like thise interstate exit ramps to highways for wildlife.
something is usually hanging out or passing through whenever you look.
