April 9th, 2024
By Jim Edward
About 20 years ago, I started treating myself to a special “outdoors day” on or around my birthday each year. I would go somewhere in the Chesapeake Bay watershed for a hike and take photos all day. Over the years, more often than not, I would wind up going to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, just outside of Cambridge, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Its location in the Atlantic Flyway provides countless opportunities to view birds and waterfowl all year long – such as the snow geese in this photo.
Snow geese,
As a lifelong environmentalist, a landscape architect, and CBLP Level 1, I’ve always been drawn to natural landscapes, and look to them for inspiration when designing sustainable landscapes in our communities. Blackwater provides an especially good palette for such inspiration.
After many, very rewarding, years at the US EPA working on the Chesapeake Bay and other environmental issues , I am now retired and have more time to explore Blackwater throughout the year. It allows me to experience the changes in its landscape and associated wildlife habitat during different seasons and times of the day.
I feel fortunate that I have time to witness these seasonal changes now, but over the last 20 years I’ve been witness to a different type of change. Change from the impacts of sea level rise and climate change at Blackwater. According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Blackwater has already lost over 8,000 acres of marsh and tidal wetlands due to climate change and continues to lose over 300 acres each year.
Critical work is being done to try and stem the tide of these losses by the FWS, EPA, additional state and local agencies, as well as nonprofit organizations. One such project involved planting over 10,000 trees to reduce further loss and protect wetlands and habitat that wildlife and waterfowl depend on each season…such as the Great Blue Herons and Pelicans pictured below.
In addition to nature photography I still continue to do some conservation landscape design work in my retirement. Blackwater refuge, and other natural spaces throughout the Bay watershed, continue to help me create and provide ideas for the work that I do. I trust that it would do the same for anyone in the conservation and environmental fields.
The landscape at Blackwater is ever changing. Our actions today and tomorrow will determine what the long term changes will be and will impact the fate of these treasured marshlands, just as the work that you do can make a real difference in the health of the Chesapeake Bay and our local waters and habitat.
Jim Edward is on the Board of the Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council (CCLC). If you want to see more of his photographs (like this Great Egret taken at Blackwater) you can visit his website – Bayland Nature Photography – https://jimedward.smugmug.com/
