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Originally Posted by MathGeek
Thanks for posting the pdf. Great stuff.
What do you have against bulushes and cattails? I know they are not great duck habitat, but they are hardy, they will slow a tidal surge, and are fairly good at holding the ground underneath them from washing away.
What am I missing? It it just a personal thing, or are they actually bad from the point of view of preserving the marsh?
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I don't know where you got that idea. I don't have anything against bulrushes and cattails, aside for the fact that cattails are highly invasive.
From the standpoint of marsh conservation, cattails and bulrushes aren't bad. For wildlife management, there are better species. Cattails and bulrushes will choke out a lot of other beneficial species, and will take over large expanses of water.
Pretty much any freshwater project we had was a bulrush project. They are very sturdy plants, can tolerate salinities a lot better than some of the other fresh species, and, as you said, are good at dampening waves or surge. They spread like wildfire under the right conditions, and if you are trying to shore up a canal bank or lake shore, bulrush is the way to go.