How deep is the marsh at the Refuge?
I got a chance today to walk out to the center of the open water in the Upper Marsh with a friend and some waders. The whole open water area you can see from the platforms is no deeper than 18 inches. You can see the water is up just below my knee. I could push that stake down about 12-24 inches down into the silt fairly easily. And from what I can tell there isn’t any “deep spot”. I know the pump has been off for about a month but I was surprised how shallow it was. My guess is even with the pump going it wouldn’t be that much deeper.
Glad to have this datapoint to begin work this winter putting together a document of what we’d like the marsh to look like if we were to dredge it. I think our best line of research is what additional kinds of wildlife can we attract if it was a larger body of open deep water.
Could we get Bufflehead, Ring-Necked, Northern Shovelers, Gadwall, American Wigeon and Hooded Mergansers there? The project really starts with putting a document together with the what, why and where. My plan is to start working on that over the winter with everyone’s help. I welcome comments and questions!
–David
David Padulo is the Chair of the Friends of Rogers Refuge.