The Chesapeake Bay watershed is home to a range of flora and fauna, including waterbirds — blue heron, glossy ibis and scores of others. The birds recently were a sticking point during the process to update the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement.
After missing about one-third of its goals deadlined for the end of this year, stakeholders from each of the six states in the partnership, including Virginia and Washington D.C., have tweaked those benchmarks based on changing data — and a desire to streamline their guiding document.
“One of the things that we realized in this two-year process of amending the Chesapeake Bay agreement is that it is important to ground these outcomes in the science,” said Adrienne Kotula, Virginia director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission. “We went back to the practitioners — the wildlife biologists, the aquatic species specialists — and asked them what they felt was doable.”
The goals in place since a 2014 update of the plan set a target of protecting “225,000 acres of wetlands” and creating, re-establishing or enhancing more than 200,000 acres of additional wetlands. That iteration of the agreement also specifically mentioned the Black Duck — and fish, oysters and crab.
Some of those references have been retained for the update, though the Black Duck didn’t make the cut. Instead, a range of lower targets are set for tidal and non-tidal wetlands and tied to a goal focused on habitat and wildlife.
Kotula pointed out the potential for overlapping success, if avian species’ habitat thrives.
William & Mary professor Bryan Watts has conducted research around the Chesapeake Bay watershed for decades. He said there’s been “a long line of insults to wetlands.”
“If you go back in time, we filled them, we drained them, we did various things to them,” Watts said. “We lost many, many thousands of acres along the Atlantic Coast to those types of human activities. Some of those we're trying to reverse now. Not so easy to do.”
Thousands of acres of coastal wetlands are lost each year to development, erosion and sea-level rise. And the issue facing waterbirds’ habitat is multifaceted: low marsh areas regularly take in sea water, but because of sea-level rise, these types of habitats are being inundated and slowly shifting inland. The move then pushes out high marshes, where different species make their homes.
“The high marsh, in some cases, is restricted either by maritime forest or by human-made barriers,” Watts said. “So, the high marsh is really losing ground rapidly. It's being just completely squeezed out of existence.”
At the same time as the topography changes, its ability to function as a filter for agricultural runoff entering the Bay is compromised. The well being of some bird species that call the area home is also diminished. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service determined the Eastern Black Rail was "threatened" — meaning the department believes it’s likely to become endangered.
“When you look out across some of these [areas] and you recognize the scale of it along the entire Atlantic Coast, it can be depressing,” Watts said about the changing landscape while discussing Rails, which he’s studied extensively. He said the species’ range has contracted about 800 miles from its most northern point.
While the updated Bay agreement omits mention of specific waterbird species, reframing habitat preservation goals leaves Watts with at least a bit of hope.
“Moving from nutrient loads to now habitat, obviously that's a welcome turn in terms of bird conservation,” Watts said, discussing changes to the cleanup plan. “I can understand why it's controversial because it does shift the objectives a little bit. But I guess we'll take the help wherever we can get it.”
The Chesapeake Executive Council, which includes Governor Glenn Youngkin, is set to vote on the updated Bay cleanup plan at its December 2nd meeting in Baltimore.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.