By Shawndra Miller / Communications manager, Central Indiana Land Trust
Wetlands take many forms: bogs, marshes, fens, dune and swale, floodplain forests, wet prairies, seeps and swamps, to name a few.
What do they have in common? All are critical to water quality. They remove toxicants from both rainwater and runoff as it filters down through their vegetation. The result is cleaner, safer drinking water.
August is Water Quality Month, marking the importance of keeping such places on the landscape. As state and federal protections for wetlands dwindle, these ecosystems face ongoing risks. About 85 percent of Indiana’s wetlands have been drained and converted to other uses. That makes the remaining 800,000 acres of intact wetlands across the state even more precious.
With recent legal changes, Notre Dame’s aquatic science professor Gary Lamberti estimates only 20 percent of the remaining wetlands are protected by the law.
That makes the protection of a fen – a globally rare ecosystem – even more exciting. Earlier this year, the Central Indiana Land Trust, Inc., received a 9.8-acre Hancock County site that includes a biodiverse wetland known as Founders Fen. The Indiana Department of Transportation previously owned the site.
INDOT had offered the property to interested parties as a non-marketable mitigation site before accepting the Land Trust’s proposal to protect it forever. We are working with the owner of an adjacent property to purchase additional land that will allow it to protect the fen more completely.
“This is a unique opportunity to preserve a place that offers rich biodiversity and also provides tangible benefits,” said CILTI president and CEO Cliff Chapman. “In addition to helping to remove carbon from the atmosphere, fens help to control flooding and filter groundwater that ends up in our drinking water.”
Founders Fen is the second-most southern fen in Indiana. Hotspots of biodiversity and sinks for atmospheric carbon, fens have groundwater flowing at or just under the surface, creating a calcium-rich environment with a thick layer of peat. Water flowing at a constant rate robs the soil of nutrients, producing a mineral-rich, nutrient-poor medium for some of Indiana’s rarest plants.
The Founders Fen site is so full of native species that Indiana’s state botanist made two site visits in 2021 to inventory plants. The site harbors rare, native plant species including the state-endangered American burnet, as well as white turtlehead, Indian plantain and queen of the prairie.
As such ecosystems become even more imperiled, any protection of what remains is worth celebrating.
Due to the delicate nature of the ecosystem, Founders Fen is not open to the public, but Central Indiana Land Trust has many other public preserves that are open to explore. Find out more at conservingindiana.org.
Headquartered in the Old Northside, the Central Indiana Land Trust stewards nature preserves throughout the central third of the state. For more information or to find a preserve to explore, visit conservingindiana.org.
Photo above: Scenes from Founders Fen in Hancock County.
