After Centuries Of Draining This Swamp, The Government Now Wants To Save It
Hundreds of years after George Washington first began draining the now-112,000-acre Great Dismal Swamp in southeastern Virginia, biologists are working to restore it to a more natural environment.
"Drain the swamp" may be a popular political slogan, but it doesn't always work so well in nature.
In southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife has been dramatically altered over the past few centuries by human development, creating an environment more vulnerable to both floods and wildfires. Now, a federal project is trying to restore some of the swamp's natural habitat and other characteristics through a that aims to reverse some of that damage.
