Greg Seymour, with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, walking through Cranberry Bog (Photo by Christina Morgan)
It’s normal to want to protect special
places in nature. But in some cases, these
places are disappearing simply because of nature.
Christina Morgan reports on an ancient spot that
might disappear in our lifetime. The people who
love it want to save it, but they might have to
let it go:
Transcript
It’s normal to want to protect special
places in nature. But in some cases, these
places are disappearing simply because of nature.
Christina Morgan reports on an ancient spot that
might disappear in our lifetime. The people who
love it want to save it, but they might have to
let it go:
For four generations, J-me Braig’s family has visited a rare
site, a bog left behind by glaciers thousands of years ago.
“As a child, I used to go out there and play on it, with my
grandmother, and we would pick cranberries; my brother and I would play on it. ”
Braig says her grandmother used to take a boat out to the bog
in a lake in Ohio. Her grandmother made pies and wine with
the cranberries.
Braig is a lake historian who’s worried about the bog. That’s
because it’s shrinking.
But before we talk about why it’s shrinking, though, it’s important
to know what makes this tiny area special.
Webster’s dictionary defines a bog as soft, waterlogged
ground. This bog, Cranberry Bog, is soft and waterlogged.
But it’s not ground. There’s no dirt. The bog is a 10 acre
patch of sphagnum moss.
Most bogs surround a glacial lake. Instead, Cranberry Bog is
surrounded by a lake, and floating. Here’s what happened.
Nearly 200 years ago, crews digging in an ancient river bed
created a reservoir to feed the Ohio and Erie canal. The
reservoir filled, the mossy bog floated to the surface. How or
why it stayed, no one knows.
“An absolute oddity. It shouldn’t be here.”
Greg Seymour is with the Ohio Department of Natural
Resources. He says the ancient bog is home to likely the only collection
of plants of its kind in the world.
More than 150 plants, a
handful native to Canada. Nudged southward by the glacier,
the plants are tricked by the cool bog mat into thinking they
never left home.
The bog is shrinking for several reasons. Waves from passing
boats loosen the bog mat. Storms topple trees
which rip out chunks of the mat. But Seymour says the biggest
threat is the bog’s chemistry, which makes the site its own
worst enemy.
“The number one factor is going to be the chemical reaction
between the alkaline lake waters and the acidic bog.”
The pH balance is off – way off. Cranberry Bog is doomed to disappear, probably within 30
years.
But area historian J-Me Braig remains upbeat, saying ever
since she can remember, someone has had a scheme to save
Cranberry Bog.
And sure enough, there is a new group determined to preserve the
ancient bog.
George O’Donnell leads Friends of Cranberry Bog. He and
others think one way to generate interest in the site, is to inventory of all that the bog has to offer.
Such an inventory is being done by the bog’s neighbor 8 miles
to the north, Dawes Arboretum.
Tim Mason is the manager of natural resources there. He says even
if the inventory and other efforts to preserve the bog fail, they
have a plan B. Dawes created a restoration area where pieces
of Cranberry Bog that break off are placed.
“We can just hold on to what’s there. It takes thousands of
years for the peat moss material to grow; so to create that is something we would certainly not see in
our life times.”
Saving the bog – or just preserving its pieces – are a long shot.
Yet the efforts persist. Historian J-Me Braig is one of many people
who hope for success. But even Braig admits, after more than
10,000 years, Cranberry Bog has had a pretty good run.
For The Environment Report, I’m Christina Morgan.
