A wetland is an area of land that is saturated with water, either permanently or seasonally, so that it takes on the characteristics of a distinct ecosystem. Wikipedia
At its inception, the university where I taught for more than 25 years was much more experimental than when I left.
The reason for the loss of exploration and the meaning of academic research was simple: governments squeeze educational institutions for additional dollars to fund such worthwhile efforts as informing the public how well the public interest is served by squeezing money out of the education and health. Advertising is actually much more expensive than social services.
Anyway… I lose myself in my vitriol against ignorant political leaders who are desperately trying to ensure that the general population remains at least as inept and stupid as themselves.
There was a professor at this university who specialized in subject areas like geology and environmental studies, long before most of us even knew the relationship between humanity and nature. He too was a credited eccentric, but that simply meant his brain was free from convention.
He realized that the university property included an area that I would have called a swamp, but which he saw as “wetland.” By the Wikipedia definition above, this was a learning opportunity.
Now, my own experience with wetland ecosystems is that they are inordinately beneficial for mosquito breeding, a fact that should be taken into account if you want to see yellow-bellied ducks and sapsuckers frolicking happily in the wild.
But this teacher turned the wetland into a learning opportunity and the students had to regularly study the behavior of the land.
As the financial forceps tightened, money for wetland research dried up (get the cheap pun?) and the area fell into disrepair, boardwalks rotting and little bridges crumbling.
There came a day when the university and the city hospital made a deal to share the land that the wetland trapped between the two institutions. Inevitably, as Joanie Mitchell sings, came the pressure to “pave paradise and build a parking lot.”
That made all sorts of wetlands stuff hit the proverbial fan; one citizen in particular made it a point to protect ducks, mosquitoes, and marsh grass. As expected, he lost the battle at every crucial step.
At some point in this process, it became the responsibility of the city administration to get involved in land use studies or whatever they do. The city’s involvement was somewhat important because it turned out that there was a large municipal water supply line running through the area.
Upon examining its water supply system, the city discovered that the main supply pipe was, in fact, seriously broken and that water had been leaking in large quantities from the faulty pipe for decades. So, before any additional work could proceed, the city repaired the supply line.
It only took a few weeks before the wetland disappeared.
Did I make this up? When I made inquiries to get verification, the officials just smiled. They would neither confirm nor deny.
I’m not even sure at this point if parking ever came to fruition.
But I bet the mosquito population dropped drastically.
Regis Yaworsky