We've seen how large areas of the eastern shore marshland have been reclaimed by open water, a process caused by rising sea level, subsiding land, and nutria. However, a recent push to exterminate the nutria has all but eliminated them as a factor. Now, however, a scientist points to another threat to the marsh:
Court Stevenson, a researcher at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science at the Horn Point Laboratory in Cambridge, adds a fourth effect: marshland damage caused by hungry geese. Snow geese are particularly harmful because they chew the marsh’s roots, he said.
He criticized the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for what he sees as the agency’s overemphasis on sheltering migratory Canada geese. Federal land managers plant hundreds of acres of crops to help improve the health of the 25,000-acre refuge’s winter visitors.
“Sometimes they try to manage by the species instead of the whole system,” Stevenson said.
As goose numbers rise, he said, a lot of the marsh plants are now getting eaten instead of being allowed to wilt and become peat, rebuilding the land.
Scientists estimate that the refuge has lost 5,000 acres of tidal marsh over the past century, though Stevenson believes the number is probably closer to 8,000. Baird said that snow geese “are of great concern.”
We've seen how large areas of the eastern shore marshland have been reclaimed by open water, a process caused by rising sea level, subsiding land, and nutria. However, a recent push to exterminate the nutria has all but eliminated them as a factor. Now, however, a scientist points to another threat to the marsh:
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