NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/1008599
NEBRASKAland Magazine • Nebraska's Saline Wetlands Success in the Salt Marsh was written by Michael Forsberg, with the cooperative efforts of the Saline Wetlands Conservation Partnership. Printed in the August-September 2018 issue of NEBRASKAland Magazine, published by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. Cover image: A lesser yellowlegs captures a tiny invertebrate out of the briny waters of a saline wetland. On an early summer day, a young hiker walks down a trail and into a world of hidden beauty and discovery – eastern Nebraska's saline wetlands. stations and motels. Arbor Lake would still be there because it was already protected, but all around it would be urban development." LaGrange pointed out how close these saline wetlands are to Lincoln, its increasingly growing and diverse community – both with students and adults – and how there is tremendous opportunity to educate and engage people with these special places just outside our doorsteps, and build appreciation. That's a key value of any natural landscape on the edge of any urban center, and it presents a choice. In a state like Nebraska with strong agricultural roots, its citizens might still have more connection to the land than in many other states, but we live in an increasingly urban world. And if we find value and want to protect the natural heritage in the places we live, the choices that we make now will make a big difference later to the generations that come after us, even if we won't live to see it. People and the Land Beyond facts and figures, laws and regulations, conservation is about people and their experiences and relationships with the land. Those relationships are both intimate and they tie us together in a place as a community. Looking back, there is a quiet legacy of relationships that run deep in the saline wetlands landscape, from an ancient past we can only imagine, to people that have made a life with the land as agriculturalists, hunters, or scientists, birdwatchers or nature lovers, finding joy or solace in these ancient and rarest of wetlands in Nebraska. As we look forward, what will someone sitting quietly at sunrise on the edge of a salt marsh north of Lincoln experience 50 years from now? Last year my oldest daughter called me from her college dorm at the University of Nebraska, excited to tell me that her cross-country team had just run a trail through a saline wetland on the edge of the city. "Dad, it was beautiful, with all the flowers and different colors of the prairie grass and wetlands, the birds, the butterflies, and it's so close to where I live. I never knew! Now I have a place to go and retreat to. Maybe we can pack a lunch and go there sometime together this fall. Hey, what are you doing tomorrow?" ■ Visit the Saline Wetlands Conservation Partnership at lincoln.ne.gov/city/parks/parksfacilities/wetlands/ to learn more about this biologically unique Nebraska landscape and to read Jon Farrar and Richard Gersib's 1991 NEBRASKAland Magazine article "The Last of the Least." To view more of Michael Forsberg's stunning photographs from this project, visit magazine.outdoornebraska.gov/ salinewetlands.