More Illegal Activity -- Filling in Wetlands

So you like it natural?


A phone conversation between Skeet (Mosquito) and Stag (Stagnant Water) was over heard the other day, and it went something like this.

Skeet: Hey, Stag, this is Skeet. Guess what? We?ve got some more party spots!
Stag: Relax, DEP?s done it. That means it?s a done deal! Cool dude! We can party to our heart?s content. TDC keeps bringing folks in, you know, along with all those folks who think wetlands are so great.
Skeet: Security? Hey, those folks keep coming in who think it?s terrible to mess up our home. If they only knew. Ha, ha! I?ve got more blood than I can drink myself, plenty for all my kids. We?re having a very good season!
Stag: For me? Don?t worry. Plenty of still water. They don?t want to touch it. They think they are saving the land for their children. If they only knew my water will kill their children! Just wait for another hurricane or big storm. I?ll get spilled out!
Skeet: Oh, what a time we?re having. Looking for something big out of this, maybe another plague or something. Remember the one we had with malaria some years back? Yeah, we hit a lot with that one, most folks now don?t even know about it! We?ve had several rounds with spinal meningitis, aids, and what about West Nile Virus? But folks today just think that medicine can cure everything. They don?t think they need to do anything to clean up their land. Yea, the days when the Mosquito Control was a real threat, sure glad people don?t realize minnows eat us! Let them keep the puddles wet and stagnant!
Stag: Crazy? Yeah, so let?s party!

So you like it natural?.....................

Re: The Skeet/Stag Joke.
:roll: This Skeet/Stag Joke seems rather silly and I would hope readers would read it with a huge grain of salt.

Or am I missing something here? :idontno:
Aren?t wetlands actually a natural way to store water and act sorta like a natural detention pond. If the uplands surrounding the wetland areas are not messed up by development, then the wetland they drain into should act as a filter for runoff materials before they have a chance to enter bodies of water. A functioning wetland should actually enhance water quality before it enters whatever water body it enters.

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Re: The Skeet/Stag Joke.
:roll: This Skeet/Stag Joke seems rather silly and I would hope readers would read it with a huge grain of salt.

Or am I missing something here? :idontno:
Aren?t wetlands actually a natural way to store water and act sorta like a natural detention pond. If the uplands surrounding the wetland areas are not messed up by development, then the wetland they drain into should act as a filter for runoff materials before they have a chance to enter bodies of water. A functioning wetland should actually enhance water quality before it enters whatever water body it enters.

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Perhaps you're missing something.

Wetlands act as a natural filter to remove nutrients from the runoff so that do not enter such bodies of water as the bay or the gulf. Why does that matter you may ask. When nutrient loads get into bays other water bodies, they cause in high levels of algae bloom. This fouls the water, depletes the O2 in the water, which in turn kills the fish and other fauna in the water body. On the other hand, wetlands make great use of these nutrients, turning them into trees and wildflowers and such.

BTW, mosquitoes, while natural to a wetland, are keep in check by the fauna of the undisturbed wetland, however excess mosquitoes are a good sign of a disturbed wetland.

BTW, mosquitoes, while natural to a wetland, are keep in check by the fauna of the undisturbed wetland, however excess mosquitoes are a good sign of a disturbed wetland.

You've got to be kidding! Where did you learn that from? Excess mosquitoes are a sign of poor land management!

You've got to be kidding! Where did you learn that from? Excess mosquitoes are a sign of poor land management!

Some research.

Keep your wetlands healthy
​

On the landscape scale, a healthy ecosystem is the best defense against mosquito outbreak. Mosquitoes are a natural part of a healthy wetland ecosystem. They have an important role to play where they serve as food for a number of species. Fish, birds, bats, amphibians, and other insects all eat mosquito larva and/or adults. This generally keeps the
mosquito population under control.

However, when wetlands are manipulated and disturbed the predators are often impacted first. While mosquitoes do well in disturbed environments, the species that eat them do not. Loss of the predators that keep the mosquito population in check can result in outbreaks. This is a good time to check the state of any wetlands on your property and come up with a management plan for those habitats. You can use best management practices to keep the habitat healthy. A healthy wetland will have a diverse fauna of the natural enemies of mosquitoes including dragonflies, damselflies, water striders, predacious diving beetles, and other insects, fish, birds, and amphibians.​

You've got to be kidding! Where did you learn that from? Excess mosquitoes are a sign of poor land management!

Graduate School in Civil and Environmental Engineering and then confirmed through years of professional practice.;-)

Graduate School in Civil and Environmental Engineering and then confirmed through years of professional practice.;-)

I was waiting for you to share your credentials. ;-)

For those of you who don't remember, Floridagirl's dad was the pioneer of the mosquito control around here, digging drainage ditches and filling them with Poison. Without the Mosquito Control, we would have more mosquitos, but we wouldn't be blasted with poisons sprayed from airplanes during the summer and we wouldn't be breathing in the poisons which they spray into the air from a truck, as they drive around our streets. Some people say that I have organic produce in my yard, but I have to always mention that the produce is sprayed from the road by the poison truck (mosquito control).

Screen and my homemade non-poisonous solutions work pretty well for me, and there is always the A/C inside, from which to escape. ;-)

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BTW, mosquitoes, while natural to a wetland, are keep in check by the fauna of the undisturbed wetland, however excess mosquitoes are a good sign of a disturbed wetland.

Floridagirl - Here is a link to a NRCS/USDA website that goes into mosquitoes in natural and constructed wetlands. It has useful information you might want to read. Wetlands are complicated and each is different but their value is understood in the scientific field.
Check out this link: http://www.water.ncsu.edu/watershedss/info/wetlands/manage.html

I have learned a little from university ecology classes and from my husbands work as a regional agronomist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (at one time working as a state agronomist in Florida), but the subject of wetlands and their problems is more than I understand completely. Maybe I can coax my husband to post. But I rather think Bdarg and maybe others can add more than enough understanding that we don't continue to look at wetlands as something needing "filled in".

As for mosquitoes, here is an excerpt from the link on Wetland Management:
Mosquito control is one reason that wetlands have historically been drained and it remains a cause of wetlands loss today. Natural wetlands, as well as restored and created wetlands, are habitat for mosquitoes. Constructed wetlands in particular may stagnate and increase breeding of mosquitoes because they lack a hydroperiod or do not contain predatory fish species.

Mosquito control does not have to cause wetland impacts or loss. However, pesticides such as organophosphates (e.g., malathion) that are used to control mosquitoes may be toxic to wetlands fish and aquatic invertebrates. Other more natural pesticides or bacteria can provide a more directed approach to mosquito control (Buchsbaum, 1994). Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti) is one bacterium that is more specific and less toxic than malathion. Careful application can avoid impacting other chironomid larvae that form the base of the food web in wetlands (Buchsbaum, 1994). An Integrated Pest Management approach to mosquito control should be used rather than drainage or non IPM-application of pesticides. Allowing predators of mosquitoes such as mosquito fish ( Gambusia affinis ), and killifishes ( Fundulus spp .) access to breeding areas or introducing these fish should be part of an IPM mosquito control program.

Another method of mosquito control is to ensure that created and restored wet meadows and marshes have a hydroperiod which includes dry conditions during the mosquito egg- laying or hatching season (Zentner, 1994). The dry conditions will prevent egg-laying and hatching.

IPM = integrated pest management
You may be familiar with Bt if you've ever use the "donuts" you throw in your backyard pond for mosquito control - it's a Bacillus bacteria.

We're all hopefully here to learn from each other ..... ;-)

Don't have to accept everything but can take it into consideration. :idontno:

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For those of you who don't remember, Floridagirl's dad was the pioneer of the mosquito control around here, digging drainage ditches and filling them with Poison. Without the Mosquito Control, we would have more mosquitos, but we wouldn't be blasted with poisons sprayed from airplanes during the summer and we wouldn't be breathing in the poisons which they spray into the air from a truck, as they drive around our streets. Some people say that I have organic produce in my yard, but I have to always mention that the produce is sprayed from the road by the poison truck (mosquito control).

Screen and my homemade non-poisonous solutions work pretty well for me, and there is always the A/C inside, from which to escape. ;-)

Look at a natural wetland as mother nature?s original organic mosquito control.

For those of you who don't remember, Floridagirl's dad was the pioneer of the mosquito control around here, digging drainage ditches and filling them with Poison. Without the Mosquito Control, we would have more mosquitos, but we wouldn't be blasted with poisons sprayed from airplanes during the summer and we wouldn't be breathing in the poisons which they spray into the air from a truck, as they drive around our streets. Some people say that I have organic produce in my yard, but I have to always mention that the produce is sprayed from the road by the poison truck (mosquito control).

Screen and my homemade non-poisonous solutions work pretty well for me, and there is always the A/C inside, from which to escape. ;-)

You are way off, he filled them with minnows. But then you didn't live here at that time, nor apparently do you go into the "wetlands" unarmed.

:popcorn:

Not only was extensive research done, but there were many years of practical experience also. I doubt seriously you lived here before the days of the mosquito control to experience nature at it's best! Some of those who did experience it, didn't survive do to Malaria, in fact, the cattle they tried to raise couldn't survive it either. I suggest you do more investigation before making judgements. Not everything you learn in college is accurate you know, their statement is that they want to stetch your creative thinking! However, I don't see it stretched a whole lot.