Bringing the Past to Life in Shaker Trace Wetlands

When European settlers arrived at the area now called Miami Whitewater Forest, they found woodlands, wetland and prairie habitat. Then the new inhabitants of what was once Whitewater Shaker Community and other farmers methodically set about draining the wetland and planting crops, never suspecting that 200 years later the Hamilton County Park District and Denis Conover would spend 15 years hoping to undo their labor and restore the area to its original state.

Today both Shaker Trace Wetlands, located in the northwestern portion of Miami Whitewater Forest, and the prairie that once again surrounds it contain over 406 species of plants in at least 83 different families. They come from two sources. One is the Shaker Trace Nursery, where the park district propagates native prairie and wetland plants for seed production. It gets most of the seeds from wild plants growing in relic prairie and wetland areas within 100 miles of Cincinnati and currently has over 150 native Ohio species, many of which are rare.

Conover is integral to understanding the second plant source. He conducted a vascular plant survey for most of the 1990s and discovered that many of the species were not planted but grew from old seeds still present in the original soil bank, as well as from natural sources of seed dispersal like birds and wind. He concluded that “if left unplanted, the wetland would become vegetated on its own, but restorationists could increase its diversity by introducing species.”

Conover began his work when the conversion from farmland to prairie and wetland first started. Now he’s back to determine how the vegetation has changed since his original survey. He visits once or twice a week during the Mar.-Oct. growing season, and one thing is certain—big changes have occurred since the restoration project began.

“What, just 15 years ago, were fields of corn and soybeans have become a paradise for wildlife,” he says enthusiastically. He describes the different habitats that have evolved: wet woods, planted prairie, ponds, a creek, old-fields, restored wetlands, and bur-oak savannah.”

A trip to Shaker Trace is “always an adventure,” he adds. In addition to finding rare plants like five-angled dodder, and Pursh’s bulrush, he talks of his joy at seeing herons, egrets, and sandhill cranes in the wetlands. Then there are the beavers. “They dug enough canals to provide an important reservoir when other parts of the wetland dried up during the heat of last summer.”

But the memory that Denis Conover will carry through the winter is of hiking in the wetland one Sept. day and finding himself surrounded by hundreds of monarch butterflies feeding on the nectar of tickseed flowers to give them fuel for their southern migration. “I wouldn’t have missed that for anything,” he says. “It is a great experience to see all of this biodiversity in what was once just a corn field.”

photos courtesy of Denis Conover