On the Importance of Reclaimed Nature

When I first discovered this place, the first word that flew into my mind was Oasis. Lush green sliced open the sheet of black asphalt stretching to the west and weighing down the earth. In the green, unruly spindles of branches spread each and every way to the sun, in contrast to the orderly rows of corn plants even further to the east. In the center of that green was a small pond, human-made yet claimed by Mallard ducks and Canada geese with the occasional frog darting around the bank.

That was last spring. Now, after a long restful winter the wayward greenery is undergoing its rebirth. Birds have returned, and buds have formed, following, as the poets say, Nature’s own design. Or is it Her design at all? The small pond is a former retention ditch, recently expanded by the spring rains, constructed to gather runoff from the asphalt. The willow trees, while lovely, were most likely placed there by humans to hide away the very existence of these waters. Even those who are in charge of the apartment complex that caused the pond to be built hardly even acknowledged or knew of its existence. "It's just a rain pond," one man said, shrugging his shoulders. "And we just don't deal with stuff like that." But the natural historian in me muses: how do those birds see it? Not to mention, those trees that wake up each spring to dig their roots deeper into the soil and bulk up for the coming season, or the frog who decides to lay her eggs in these waters?

It's no secret that retention ponds are homes to pollutants. Sludge and metals from the roads wash away toward open earth, only to be caught by these types of ponds before more damage to "nature" can occur. However, what happens when the thing that you create to protect nature turns our to be yet another moment in nature itself? Will the red-winged blackbirds who nest in these places really be as resilient against the heavy metals flowing into their bodies as science suggests? (Sparling et al, 2004) Will living creatures fall prey to the hidden human predator of the pesticides that flow into waters such as these? Do we have an obligation for the toxic spaces we have created as a species, even if they are not considered conventionally pristine to begin with? This is not simply a phenomenon that can be attributed to this area or even the Eastern Shore of Maryland itself. It is on a much larger scale than just a few retention ponds. In Sweden, there have been studies on the heavy metals that have found their way into these waters, adversely affecting frogs and other anuran species (Fritioff and Greger, 2003). Agricultural runoff has been an increasing issue throughout the world as pesticides are used in large amounts in order to expand yields. Even the very estimate of the damage caused by pollution has the possibility of being greater than recorded (Stehle and Schulz, 2015). How are we citizens of the earth able to dismiss so easily what has the potential to be so harmful? How can we say that this is a better option for the environment when it simply concentrates and perhaps even intensifies the problem?

 As humans we tend to divide our world into two realms: this is human land, this is natural land. This line drawn in the sand means nothing to the natural world. From the weeds that spring up in the cracks in the sidewalk to the forests that begins again to appear the very moment after people have cut them down, nature is always there, little by little attempting to reclaim what she owns. 

I think reclamation is a fitting word for a place like this. I doubted that anyone intended for there to be such life in a forgotten area such as this but it exists all the same. I wonder if this is a temporary state. As ponds such as this grow older, the toxicity in them rises and without human intervention, it could harm the things that live there. In a study involving retention ponds such as this, it was found that red-winged blackbirds, like the ones I have seen at my site, live normally with the toxins in their bodies. However, the study had to admit that none of the sites were old enough to cause many problems (Sparling, et al. 2004) that would only appear after chronic exposure to toxins.  If the sites were not properly dredged, there may very well be another outcome. What would happen if they conducted the same study five years, ten years, or even further in the future with more ill-kept and ill-managed ponds? Would they still conclude that the blackbirds were healthy? One finds here as well communities of creatures people do not typically observe. Entire communities of insects, aquatic hemipterans, create complex webs of interaction in waters such as these (Foltz and Dodson, 2008). This in turns feeds a number of creatures at these sites, creating a small ecosystem, all from a human made pond or ditch. However, if we were to just let things run their course here, all the life harbored here could end up amounting to little more than a silent divet of water surrounded by rotting trees.  Perhaps the future holds something different. Perhaps nature will reclaim itself and triumph over the human made and make it her own once more. 

However, pondering about the future does not change the now. It does not make any difference to the first mallard of the season, dragging lazily across the water after a long night of flight, nor does it change the state of the phragmities and cattails, each growing in battle for dominance between the native and the non-native. If someone stood in a mighty forest and found these same inter-actions occurring, surely they would be in awe. Yet set before a retention pond in the midst of an urban landscape, the same onlooker all too often feels nothing at all. Nature that grows up in the face of an adverse human environment is still just that, nature, regardless of what value humans give it.

This place in particular is a curious case of stubborn nature. It is locked between farmland and asphalt which logic would dictate would be prone significant amounts of pesticide pollution in addition to toxins from the parking lot. It is also routinely the site of litter and illegal dumping by the residents of the apartment complex who mostly are college students. It makes me wonder how other people view this area in the community. If the pond were a human neighbor, would they do the same? Would they smash a TV and leave it sitting at a neighbor’s doorstep as they had by the pond? The day I found the scattered electronic remains around my site, I couldn’t stop myself from becoming angry at the situation. Was it because I had come to love this little pond and the migratory birds who stopped there? Was it because I wanted to see it grow despite its already adverse conditions? Perhaps it was more of an anger toward my own kind who had such brazen apathy toward the living would that they would go to the extent of destruction, both of human made objects and the living world, just to ease their apparent boredom. Maybe if those people had come to care about the site, they would reconsider. Perhaps if they didn’t draw the line between the human and natural world, they wouldn’t commit such an act.

Humans typically hold respect for natural areas, I believe, but when the natural treads onto their human “territory” it’s hard to acknowledge how this matters People will, without a second thought, dump things in an area or spray it down with pesticides if they believe it is an area they control. Perhaps that is the issue with humanity in general. We believe we can do whatever we want with the pieces of earth we own. Whether we create nature or destroy it, it is for the individual to decide. It is because we perceive that we are above the natural word that we do not honor it. We are a community with those Canada geese, those Mallard ducks, and even those little frogs that jump in the ponds around us. We are a community with the nature that grew around us as well with that which we bring forth. This may not be a Walden Pond or any pristine example of nature’s beauty, but it is something worthy of our respect and care. 

- Allison Grevey

References

Brix-Raybuck, Devynn. Price, Steve. Dorcas, Michael. “Pond age and riparian zone proximity

influence occupancy of urban retention ponds.” Urban Ecosyst (2010): Issue 13 pp.181 – 190.

Casey, R. Shaw, A. Massal, L. Snodgrass, J. “Multimedia Evaluation of Trace Metal Distribution

within Retention Ponds in Suburban Maryland, USA.” Environmental Contamination Toxicology (2005): Issue: 74. Pp 273-280 PDF.

Foltz, Sarah. Dodson, Stanley. “Aquatic Hemiptera community structure in stormwater retention

ponds: a watershed land cover approach.” Hydrobiologica: Issue 621. Pp. 49-62. PDF.

Fritioff, Asa. Greger, Maria. “Aquatic and Terrestrial Plant Species with the Potential to Remove

Heavy Metals from Stormwater.” International Journal of Phytoremediation: (2003). Issue 5(3). Pp. 211-224. PDF

Hancock, Gregory. Holley, Jonathan. Chambers, Randoph. “A field-based evaluation of wet

retention ponds: How effective are ponds at water quantity control?” Journal of the American Water Resources Association: Vol. 46, No. 6. PDF.

Sparling, Donald. Esemann, John. Kuenzel, Wayne. “Contaminant Exposure and Effects in Red

Winged Blackbirds Inhabiting Stomwater Retention Ponds.” Environmental Management: Vol. 33, No 5, pp. 719-729. PDF.

Stehle, Sebastian. Schulz, Ralf. “Agricultural insecticides threaten surface waters at the global

scale.” PNAS Early Edition. Institute for Environmental Sciences, University Koblenz-Landau. 2015.

Thoreau, Henry David. “The Ponds.” Walden. 1854. Web. Retrieved April 15^th, 2015 from

http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden9a.html 

Wang, Chih-Yu. Sample, David. Bell, Cameron. “Vegetation effects of floating treatment

wetland nutrient removal and harvesting strategies in urban stormwater ponds.” Science of the Total Environment (2014): Issue 499 pp. 384 – 393. PDF.