here is a silence in wetlands that is not emptiness but a deep breath of life. If you stand still enough among the reeds and shallow waters, you can feel the pulse of a hidden world that insists on surviving even when we, its supposed guardians, forget it exists.
In the Caribbean lowlands of Colombia, wetlands are more than stagnant water: they are nature’s slow heartbeat, filtering sediments, tempering floods, and nourishing entire communities who, generation after generation, have learned to read their cycles. Fishermen watch for the changing currents, children chase frogs at dusk, and herons stand motionless, teaching patience to whoever cares to observe.
But this quiet miracle is fragile. Fields expand, concrete creeps closer, and policies written far away often ignore the small, muddy edges where biodiversity shelters in plain sight. What once were vast marshes are now shrinking ponds, drained to make way for quick profits and reckless urban dreams.
I have walked these wetlands under punishing sun and sudden tropical downpours. I have watched the footprints of capybaras dissolve in the mud after rain, the same way our memory of these places dissolves when we label them “wastelands” or “unused land.” Yet nothing could be more untrue: a wetland is never empty. It holds the weight of a community’s food security, it traps carbon, it shields towns from floods, it gifts shade where heat kills.
Today, as cities heat up and water becomes a commodity instead of a right, we remember wetlands only when disaster knocks at the door. Floods push people out of their homes, droughts dry the soil until it cracks like old pottery, and somewhere in between, people whisper: “We should have protected that lagoon, that marsh, that old seasonal pond.”
But regret is a poor substitute for conservation. Wetlands are generous; they heal themselves if we allow them to. Even a degraded wetland can revive with time, local knowledge, and collective will. Reeds grow back, fish return, birds nest again — if we stop pretending we have more important things to pave over.
I write these lines not just as a biologist who has cataloged species among mangroves and floodplains, but as someone who has listened to elders tell stories about a river that once ran clearer, fish that once jumped closer to shore, and children who learned to swim in pools that now exist only as names on a map.
Wetlands are our liquid memory. They store not only water but stories, resilience, and quiet lessons about coexisting with what we cannot fully control. They remind us that nature’s cycles ignore our boundaries, our deeds, our short-term plans. Water will always find its way back; the question is whether it will nourish or destroy when it does.
Protecting wetlands is not just an ecological task — it is a moral choice about the kind of future we wish to leave behind. When we let a marsh die, we lose more than birds and fish. We lose a buffer against storms, a pantry during lean seasons, and a teacher that has quietly sustained generations.
In my fieldwork, I have seen communities revive wetlands by simply allowing them to breathe again: digging small channels, planting native vegetation, letting floods come and go instead of fighting them with walls that eventually crack. Restoration is possible, but it starts in the mind: we must stop thinking of wetlands as obstacles and see them as allies.
For some, speaking about wetlands may sound less urgent than talking about glaciers melting or forests burning. But in regions like mine, wetlands are often the first line of defense against the climate crisis that others debate from air-conditioned rooms far away. Here, a healthy marsh means less displacement during the rainy season, more fish during hard times, cooler air when the sun punishes the land.
I hope you, reading this, can pause and ask yourself: What wetland protects me without my knowing? What small pond, seasonal swamp, or hidden creek absorbs the storms I curse when they flood my street? And once you find the answer, do something about it: learn its name, walk its edge, talk to neighbors who remember how it used to look. Write about it. Speak for it when plans appear to cover it with asphalt.
This column is not just an observation from a distant field; it is an invitation. An invitation to see the ordinary as vital. To understand that sustainability is not an abstract word but a relationship built on recognizing what sustains us in return.
In the end, wetlands are the quiet, stubborn guardians of our water, our food, and our memory. May we remember them not only when it is too late but while they can still remind us, day after day, how to coexist with water instead of pretending to conquer it.