CHAPTER 5 



HUMAN IMPACT ON THE HIGH MARSH 



Lying between the tide line and 

 the upland, the high salt marshes have 

 been pushed in both directions by 

 human activities. Since the mid 

 1600's, the marshes in New England 

 have been flooded or drained, 

 impounded or diked, ditched or filled. 

 They have been converted into fresh or 

 brackish water meadows as well as 

 landfills, parking lots, and housing 

 developments. They have been praised 

 for growing hay that saved livestock 

 and damned for breeding mosquitoes 

 that brought discomfort and disease. 

 Human activities have polluted them 

 with metals, oil, chemicals, and 

 trash. Recently they have been 

 protected and preserved with 

 environmental legislation. It is an 

 interesting pattern of changing 

 perceptions and values. In this 

 environment, perhaps more than in any 

 other marine ecosystem, man has been 

 both manager and manipulator. 



SALT MARSH HAY 



Before the salt marshes were 

 considered wastelands in need of 

 "reclamation," and even longer before 

 they were elevated to the rank of a 

 "sacred cow" in the environmental 

 movement, the marshes were clearly, 

 and intimately, a part of the early 

 New Englander's "life support system." 



While the cutting of Spartina 

 patens or salt marsh hay is a recent 

 enough activity to be part of the 

 boyhood memories of many present-day 

 New England coastal farmers, it is 



47 



difficult to appreciate the importance 

 of this resource in the first 100 

 years or so of the agricultural 

 economy of the area. In the recent 

 past, salt marsh hay was a supplement 

 used more for animal bedding, 

 mulching, and "topping" hay stacks to 

 keep field grasses dry, than as a 

 staple feed. But at one time the 

 marsh hay was a major food source 

 which made the keeping of livestock 

 possible and practical. And it was 

 livestock that formed the mainstay of 

 New England agriculture in the early 

 years (Russell 1976). 



The presence, at least in 

 southern coastal New England, of large 

 areas of land cleared by the Indians 

 helped the first colonists greatly, as 

 did the open freshwater meadows along 

 the river floodplains. But it was 

 difficult to obtain suitable forage 

 for a large number of animals, and 

 predators, especially wolves, were a 

 great problem (Wood 1634; Russell 

 1976). As Bidwell and Falconer noted 

 (1925) in their classic History of 

 Agriculture in the Northern United 

 States 1620-1860 : 



"A condition of prime importance 

 for the successful raising of 

 livestock is of course an 

 abundant supply of native forage 

 plants. In this respect the 

 North American continent was 

 strikingly deficient. The 

 Indians of the region kept no 

 herbivorous domestic animals and 

 hence had developed no forage 

 plants In the face of such 



