Abstract
The objective of this project in the beginning was to restore a destroyed wetland area.
As the project progressed, a deeper objective appeared to be what would make it more
lasting. The revised objective was to introduce the Bardstown area human community to the
existence, values, and functions of a wetland ecosystem community that was in their midst.
Individual persons in the human community would cooperate as members of an ecosystem of
which each person and species was a part. This objective was accomplished:
1) By involving the human community in education about wetlands; what they are,
what they do, their diversity and complexity, their value to humans and to the
local ecosystems;
By restoring, in stages, a wetland area on sixty-six acres of land owned by the
Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky;
By establishing educational partnerships within the human community in which
adult citizens and students participated in monitoring every aspect of the health of
the wetland ecosystem.
The above activities resulted in community support of the wetland, and assistance in the
maintenance of the acreage, which became to be known as “Ecoland.”
