The Great Lakes by Wayne Grady

Author:Wayne Grady
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SCI020000, NAT018000
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
Published: 2011-04-28T04:00:00+00:00

MAJOR WETLANDS OF THE GREAT LAKES BASIN

As the continent’s western regions opened to colonization, swamps were considered impediments to settlement. In 1850, the United States passed the Swamp Lands Act, which ceded 64 million acres (26 million hectares) of publicly owned land that was deemed “wet and unfit for cultivation” to state governments on condition that those governments drained them and made them fit for farming. In the Great Lakes area, Minnesota received 2 million hectares (5 million acres), Illinois 600,000 (1.5 million acres), and Wisconsin 1.4 million (3.5 million acres). In most cases, any citizen who went to the trouble of draining the swamps could assume title to the land. By the 1930s, virtually all of the huge wetlands in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin had been drained. Similar attitudes to swamps existed in Canada; more than 70 percent of southern Ontario’s wetlands have been drained since pioneer days. Drained wetlands are often referred to euphemistically as “reclaimed land,” as though wetlands originally belonged to us and were somehow stolen by water, but have now been returned to their rightful owners.

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