Mentor Marsh
Mentor Marsh is a body of water in Lake County, Ohio, United States. It is a lakeshore wetland with marsh vegetation, aquatic plants, swamp and bottomland forest, and upland forest. Owned by the private sector, but protected by the state of Ohio as part of Mentor Marsh State Nature Preserve, the wetland is a National Natural Landmark located within the metropolitan area of Cleveland, Ohio. It was listed as a Landmark in 1964.
History and description
The National Park Service describes Mentor Marsh as follows:The 700-acre area was originally a river channel which became marshy, and then became a swamp forest, rich in all kinds of animal and plant life. It originates in land from two salt mines, whose owners simply dumped contaminated waste in the swamp in the 1960s, which killed all the native plants and trees. Then, the area was invaded by phragmites, which leave a lot of dead and highly flammable material above ground. After a wildfire in 2003 which burned more than 400 acres, including some of the installed boardwalks, a buffer zone around the boardwalks was cleared of phragmites with herbicides, and the plant material crushed into the ground to save them from future fires. Soon, native plants, whose seeds had been buried in the mud but were prevented from growing through the dense phragmites, sprung up by the dozens--over sixty in the first year. Funds were acquired for a full restoration of the marsh, and the project was completed in 2018. After, 180 native plant species were noted. A native wild rice was discovered a few years later by naturalist Becky Donaldson, and identified as Southern wild rice. The seeds may have been dormant for as long as a century; by 2023, full rice beds had developed.