You can hear the wetland before you see it. The calls of chorus frogs resound across the prairie, blending into the Red-wing Blackbird chorus. The undulating prairie wind takes on sharper tones as it courses through the cattails. We hear voices carried on the wind, subtle at first, then clear. The water hosts many conversations. Squeaks, pips, chuhs, whistles, and honks all combine to hint at life in a wetland.
A rush of wings alerts us to birds taking flight. Their conversation becomes more strident. The shorebirds are shockingly fast. They circle the wetland in a tight formation, looking like fighter jets but with more grace, agility, and beauty. Most of the shorebirds land on a mudflat, while others leave. A large flock of waterfowl drops out of the sky. The wetland is thrumming with life and is a focal point on the landscape.
This small wetland in a farm field in central Illinois is an oasis. I find the experience thrilling, and I want more people to have this same opportunity to enjoy nature. That is why documentary filmmaker Bob Dolgan and I partnered to create a movie about a new wetland restoration project called Fluddles.
In Illinois, over ninety percent of our wetlands are gone, and bringing them back has proven extremely challenging. But there is a glimmer of hope. Birdwatchers know where the best flooded fields are to watch birds in spring and fall. After heavy rains, some of our former wetlands still hold water for several days to a few weeks. These temporarily flooded fields are called “fluddles,” a portmanteau of “flooded puddles.” They are a shadow of a natural wetland, but they give us a place to begin.
The Fluddles project started as an effort to get better eBird data to identify the best wetlands for birds. I started by reaching out to the Geography Department at Illinois State University. Synchronicity kicked in, and we quickly found an interested faculty member who then found an interested graduate student. They worked together to create GIS maps of the former wetlands in our county by studying aerial photos and soil types.
They discovered that they could still see thousands of wetland basins on the landscape. Here’s the remarkable thing - if you were to look across most farm fields in Central Illinois during most of the year, you would see little to no standing water. This is because drain tiles have been installed deep in the soil, siphoning off the water and rapidly sending it down ditches, creeks, rivers, and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico, where the excess nutrients contribute to the dead zone. Finding these wetlands hiding in plain sight was very exciting!
We used the GIS map and site visits to identify the largest and most persistent wetlands in our county. Then, we asked birders to visit these wetlands to record the birds they saw in eBird. This would help establish the case that these areas are serving an important purpose even in their compromised state.
The initiative confirmed what we already knew … waterfowl, shorebirds, and other water birds are using these wetlands as stopover habitats. These are important places to rest and refuel on a long, arduous journey. Historically, wetlands were links in a chain that extended from South America to northern Canada. Human interference has broken up the chain, and the links are now widely scattered across the landscape. This makes migration much more difficult and dangerous for the birds, as they have to fly over a green sea of row crops that offer little by way of nutritious food and a safe place to rest.
Our initial idea for Fluddles was to film birders and the wetlands in our county. However, when we learned that the neighboring county to the east was actively restoring wetlands, we focused on them instead.
The story of restored wetlands is closely intertwined with the economics of farming and the social constraints of a rural community. Farmers lose money growing corn and beans most years, and they lose even more money in the wet spots in their fields. However, the deeply entrenched nature of our industrial food system allows inefficient and nonsensical practices to persist. It makes no sense to keep planting crops in an area where you know they will be flooded and die. Interestingly, this creates an opening for wetland restoration.
Pheasants Forever recognized this dynamic and started meeting with farmers to implement their version of precision agriculture. They mapped out farmland and showed the farmers their yield maps. The wet spots have low to no yield, which means farmers are in the red in those areas. The idea is to turn those red acres blue through wetland restoration.
Pheasants Forever got farmers thinking about wetlands, and then Jason Bleich, a Private Lands Biologist and expert on wetland restoration with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), stepped in and showed them what to do next. Farmers were willing to at least give Jason a listen, as he was from a farm family and had built a wetland on his own farm.
Jason explained that cost-share funding from the USFWS and the Natural Resource Conservation Service and other incentives generated positive cash flow for these wet areas if they were restored to wetlands. This was a powerful economic incentive, but there were still hurdles.
People do not like to stand out; they want to be part of an in-group. Farmers are no different. Most of them farm in a very similar manner. Being different is scary. We needed to give them cover. To give them a safe reason to justify wetlands. We needed … ducks.
Many of the restored wetlands are used for duck hunting. This is culturally acceptable in a rural community and allows us to make progress on a formerly intractable problem. Here is the thing about duck hunting, most of the time spent sitting in a duck blind is actually birdwatching. When in the blind, the farmers started noticing shorebirds, cranes, egrets, rails, muskrats, frogs, and all the life that had returned to the land. They became birdwatchers, and they began to love wetlands.
Bob Dolgan and I were fortunate to spend time with farmers at a few recently restored wetlands. I am a birdwatcher, and I was a duck hunter in the past, so I was not at all surprised to see how birdwatchers and hunters connected over the birds. In working with this group, I watched as the labels we give people and the divides we construct in our minds were dissolved by awe and wonder as we walked through the prairie and marveled at flocks of ducks that rose up into massive, billowing clouds that stretched from horizon to horizon.
The ducks kept circling, beauty upon beauty, holding our gaze. The shimmering wetland opened a shimmering place in our minds. We became more open and free-flowing. Our minds, the water, and the wind all merged into one. The golden prairie rippled in the breeze, a prairie sea mediating between sky and earth. We watched the ducks fade into the clouds. They became tiny specks, and I imagined them looking down at us and seeing us as tiny specks of life. As I watched the ducks become clouds, I returned to the present moment and thought, “How can we not have wetlands everywhere?”
These wetland restoration projects represent a remarkable transformation of people and the land. Groups of people formerly in conflict found common ground, and new friendships were formed. We all began to disentangle ourselves from the web of misconceptions and bad incentives that influence us. We quickly learned that we all care about the same things, namely, family, wildlife, the land, and our communities.
We were there because a few brave farmers took a risk and stepped outside the pre-determined roles expected of them. They were all supposed to play their part in maintaining the outdated myth that would have us believe that our industrial food system can do no harm. These farmers experience the harm our brutal food system inflicts more directly than most. You do not have to look too hard to see the mass exodus from the countryside.
These farmers are part of a growing group of people who listened to what their hearts were telling them to do. Jim Kietzman is one of the farmers who restored wetlands on his farm. He is featured in this film and describes how he is "surprised by something every day out here. It is a good thing."
We need more people to be able to pursue what intrigues them rather than conveniently fit into capitalist narratives that limit their creativity and potential. We can all listen to our hearts. We all have agency in how land is treated. Every trip to the grocery store is a chance to perpetuate the status quo or to support habitat and wildlife. Our food choices matter.
As the wetlands increase, more people will become enamored with their beauty. Water will flow through our consciousness and change us. People will start making choices that favor nature, and wetlands will expand and help us see that our lives are better when surrounded by life. This is how we were meant to live.
One of the most encouraging aspects of this project is that young people are excited about wetlands, too. Some of them are finding work in wetland restoration. The young men and women featured in the film were willing to stand in front of a camera and tell their stories. That is no small thing for them personally and for our culture. Five years ago, we could not have made this film. People would not have been willing to publicly confess their love of wetlands. The older generations still see them as anathema to farming. To them, wetlands represent something to overcome and eliminate at all costs. Times are changing.
The people and perspectives captured in this film represent a dramatic shift in what is possible. I am proud of this film and how we captured some of these significant moments. The Fluddles film was made by bird lovers with diverse skill sets. Most of us have other full-time jobs. It was a labor of love. We operated on a small budget, but we are having a significant impact. We recently screened the film at our local indie theater and hosted a panel discussion afterward. That got people talking. Plans were made, and new connections were formed. Wetlands will be returning to the land.
You can watch the film for free on Vimeo for a limited time. Go to Fluddles, click buy, and enter the promo code BIRDS.
Hands shading eyes,
I follow the high flight:
honoring heaven, the bird
traverses
the transparency, without soiling the day
Winging westward, it climbs
each step up to the naked blue:
the entire sky is its tower,
and the world is cleansed by its movement.
Though the violent bird
seeks blood in the rose of space,
its structure is
arrow and flower in flight,
and in the light its wings
are fused with air and purity.
O feathers destined
not to tree, meadow, or combat,
or to the atrocious ground
or sweatshop,
but to the conquest
of a transparent fruit!
I celebrate the skydance
of gulls and petrels
attired in snow
as though I had
a standing invitation:
I participate
in their velocity and repose,
in the pause and haste of snow.
What flies in me is manifest
in the errant equation of those wings.
Interlude: The Flight by Pablo Neruda
While the essence of conservation is noble, perhaps there’s a layer of harmony yet to be explored. Could it be that in our structured efforts to restore, we might overlook the unstructured beauty of letting nature reclaim its own rhythm?
Thank you for your heartfelt work and dedication. Your story illuminates a path forward, encouraging us all to find our place within the natural world. Your passion is truly inspiring.
This is brilliant and brings me great joy to hear the enthusiasm of creating wetlands. A native of central Illinois a decade back, I could envision these dotting the miles of flat boring fields. I remembered driving I55 in the cooler season and the massive migration of geese in the sky. Going to check out your film. Just wonderful to read this!