We decided to dust off and update this innovative solution to restoring habitats with the most industrious aquatic mammal: beavers. At The Optimist Daily, we’ve written a great deal about the benefits beavers bring to their environment and the importance of restoring their populations in Read More...
After forests, wetlands are the greatest terrestrial carbon sink. These boggy and busy pools of life used to be thought of as a nuisance for people and communities, drained of their water or dug up for peat fuel. Now, we understand the quiet service that wetlands provide us and the Read More...
At The Optimist Daily, we’ve written a great deal about the benefits beavers bring to their environment and the importance of restoring their populations in certain areas. Beavers are often vilified in certain communities for the same reason they’re such iconic North American creatures: they Read More...
For those in the world who have to live with it, you may wonder “what on earth is peat good for?” Peatland is a mossy wet mass that you can’t build on, you can barely walk on, you can’t grow crops on it, and all its stagnant water is a breeding ground for mosquitoes which bring Read More...
The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change of Canada has announced more than C$25 million in funding to conserve, restore, and enhance wetlands and grasslands in the Prairie provinces. This initiative could conserve up to 30,000 hectares of wetlands, grasslands, and riparian areas, on top of Read More...
Nitrogen runoff from agriculture is a major problem, polluting our waterways and causing algae blooms that damage aquatic ecosystems. Wetlands offer a powerful buffer to nitrogen runoff as they serve as a natural filter to nutrient-polluted water, but we need to restore more wetlands in order to Read More...
Wetlands play a vital role in ecosystems, specifically when it comes to water purification. A new study from the University of Waterloo and the University of Illinois took a deeper look at just how influential targeted wetland restoration could be for improving water quality. When analyzing Read More...
Travel beyond Amsterdam’s northern outskirts and you enter a scene that looks like a 17th-century Dutch painting. Cows chew their cud in lush pasture fringed with reed beds, in a region of pretty villages whose houses are often snapped up by wealthy urban commuters. By Dutch standards, this Read More...
Wetlands are a crucial part of our ecosystems. In addition to providing habitats for aquatic species, wetlands pull greenhouse gasses from the air, protect areas from flooding, and purify water. That’s why it’s an absolute shame that the planet has lost up to 71 percent of its global wetlands Read More...