Poplar Island
 |
Poplar Island, located off Talbot County in the mid Chesapeake Bay, has become a national model of environmental restoration. It is the site of a cutting-edge solution for both dredged material management and restoration of a once vanishing island. In the past, the Poplar Island chain hosted first a thriving bay community and later a retreat for politicians, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt. By the mid-1800s, erosion was hard at work and taking a toll on the island. By the 1990s, more than 1,000 acres had been reduced to five. The loss of the island, and its critical wildlife habitat, has been reversed through the use of clean dredged material from Baltimore’s shipping channels. The process involves placing, shaping, and planting some 40 million cubic yards of dredged material on and around the island remnants, within a dike constructed to approximate the 1847 footprint of the island. The first two phases of dike construction were completed by 2002, and dredged material began to arrive in 2001. The material placed at the site comes from projects that widened the Brewerton Channel Eastern Extension, straightened the Tolchester and help to maintain the Port's access channels.
|
|
The restoration of Poplar Island includes a variety of measures to provide homes for wildlife, including the creation of upland and wetland habitats. Biologists and citizen groups have joined together to provide underwater and wetland grasses for crabs and fish; trees and shrubs for colonial nesting wading birds; and sand and broken oyster shells for colonial ground nesting birds. Already, diamondback terrapins nest at Poplar Island, in addition to many species of birds.
The restoration of Poplar Island has gained national attention, and Maryland and the Army Corps of Engineers won a “Coastal America” award for their work.
Download the Poplar Island Backgrounder.