Soft-stemmed bulrush is a tall, graceful plant most at home growing in shallow waters throughout much of North America (and beyond). While not particularly rare, their dark green, rounded stems and bronzy-brown, drooping “flowers” are not just iconic of a wetland environment, they also became the inspiration for a grassroots natural resource preservation project.

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What's in a name? When Standing Rush took possession of its current property along Lake Erie in the spring of 2015, the only bulrush stand was an isolated remnant about the size of a standard card table; just a few years into the restoration, softstem and other desirable native emergent plant species now comprise the majority of the vegetative cover in the marsh.

 

Standing Rush, LLC was founded as a conservation real estate company that specializes in the biological restoration and long-term preservation of ecologically sensitive areas in northern Ohio. Standing Rush is not an anti-development organization. Rather, it promotes traditional development where it makes sense and encourages conservation in natural areas that have unique biological value.

 

Standing Rush’s current focus is on coastal wetlands of Lake Erie – an immensely important yet chronically underappreciated habitat that once covered a region of northern Ohio and southern Michigan that was larger than the Everglades. Less than 10% (<30,000 acres) of this habitat remains.

 

In February 2015, Standing Rush secured just over 600 acres of land and water located on the south shore of Sandusky Bay (Erie County, Ohio), just south and east of the Village of Bay View. Limited resources had been available to manage the property since the mid-1980s. Therefore, portions of the site require significant rehabilitation to maximize a broad array of wetland functions and values.