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Earth Matters : Swamps, stewardship and conservation: What does it mean to care for a forest?

By Christine Hatch

Swamps are great story villains. They are notoriously difficult to navigate due to their sinking sticky mud, spiked vines and dense vegetation; they are neither fully land nor water, negating boats and footwear as helpful vessels for traversing them; and black, smelly, organic-rich waters and sparse sunlight add to the impenetrable mystery. In short, they have the perfect protective outerwear to shield them from human predators — at least for a while. I used to think that in order to conserve nature, we had to wall it off and protect it from all outside influences, especially our meddling human selves. I thought that left to its own devices, the natural world would restore itself to balance…