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On #Oneida #Wetlands, Bird Surveys Affirm Tribal Conservation Success
A recent collaboration between #Wisconsin birders and the #OneidaNation demonstrates how the tribe's decades-long habitat restoration paid off.

Words by Xian Chiang-Waren
Senior Associate Editor, #Audubon Magazine
Published Winter 2021

"Twenty years ago, Tony Kuchma took charge of restoring the Oneida Nation's wetlands in northeastern Wisconsin. The land was marked by old mills and farm operations. The water was #polluted. The fields were overrun with non-native plants.

"Since then, Kuchma and his team have rehabilitated about 3,000 acres of the reservation. 'Large-scale #restoration is an accumulation of years of effort,' he says. 'We’re looking at the land: Some wants to be prairie, some trees, some wetland. The land tells you what it wants to be again.'

"Now streams flow where ditches stood, and there's a renewed #wildlife presence. 'We’ve had eagles come back,' says Randy Cornelius, a cultural representative of the tribe. 'I’ve seen ospreys, cormorants, ducks I’ve never seen before.'"

https://www.audubon.org/magazine/winter-2021/on-oneida-wetlands-bird-surveys-affirm-tribal

#RestoreNature #RestoreTheWetlands #NatureBasedSolutions #IndigenousWisdom #Collaboration