Hambleton Island restoration: Environmental Concern's first wetland creation project

Abstract

Early in 1971, the author began a 1-year sabbatical near Hambleton Island (HI) after resigning from his teaching/researching chemistry professorship at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. A new career for the author and this project commenced after reading “The Life and Death of a Salt Marsh” by Teal and Teal [Teal, J., Teal, M., 1969. Life and Death of the Salt Marsh. Little, Brown and Co., Boston, MA]. After obtaining the necessary Maryland and Army COE permits to proceed with this project, one of the author's chemistry post doctorates, Dr. Paul Woller, and one of his graduate students who just received his Ph.D. in chemistry, Dr. Robert McCallum, joined the author to restore a section of Hambleton Island that had eroded into two islands, back to a single section through the creation of over 0.8 ha of tidal brackish marsh. This is a story of the creation of a tidal marsh by three Ph.D. chemists who had never grown a plant and, at the beginning, knew nothing about wetlands. In 1972, the author formed Environmental Concern Inc., a public not-for-profit corporation that has constructed (created, restored, or enhanced) over 700 non-tidal and tidal wetlands throughout mostly the eastern USA through year 2003.