The Unexpected Result Is Not Always a Failure

Ron Fink

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Published: March 12, 2002

This seems to be an exceptional paper documenting a substantial effort on the part of many individuals and organizations. If I have any criticism at all, it is directed toward the assumption that the development of nonvegetated sink holes is necessarily a bad thing.

During some earlier work in collecting esturarine amphipods and isopods in the Squamish River esturary, I was struck by the very high concetration of these organisms in the many pools and hollows located throughout the middle marsh at low tide. These low areas developed in response to the presence of stumps and logs and smaller woody debris grounding in the vegetated shallows.

Because marshes are a complex association of both plant and animal species, if I were building one, I would try to incorporate just the type of areas that the authors felt needed to be drained. As long as they are stable and provide low-tide refuges for invertebrate species, can they be considered a failure in the process of artificial marsh creation ?

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Dawe, N. K., G. E. Bradfield, W. S. Boyd, D. E. C. Trethewey, and A. N. Zolbrod. 2000. Marsh creation in a northern Pacific estuary: Is thirteen years of monitoring vegetation dynamics enough? Conservation Ecology 4(2): 12. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/Journal/vol4/iss2/art12