Fen, Bog & Swamp, by Annie Proulx

Review by Dave Gamrath

One-liner:  In  Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis, author Annie Proulx provides a discursive/rambling history of wetlands, and how their destruction will severely worsen the impact from climate change and other ecological crises.

Book Review: 

On May 25, 2023, the US Supreme Court issued a decision in Sackett v. EPA to dramatically weaken the Clean Water Act.  This decision departed from 45 years of precedent, overturned a previous Supreme Court decision, and ignored the text of the Clean Water Act.  Writing for the 5-to-4 majority, Justice Samuel Alito asserted that any wetland that does not connect at its surface to another body of federally protected water doesn’t merit protection.  Per water experts, “the notion that the law can’t protect a body of water, simply because there’s a road between it and another body of water that is unquestionably protected, is absurd and unscientific.”  Water flows in all sorts of ways: aboveground; belowground; rapidly down rivers and streams, and slowly through the cleansing filters of the reeds, soils, and grasses that make up a wetland.  This decision reduced protected waters in the US by over 50%, including removing protections for seasonal rivers in America’s deserts, which can now be decimated by mining operations. 

Angst over this court ruling inspired me to read Annie Proulx’s 2022 book Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis.  Proulx has been one of my favorite writers of fiction for years, and I looked forward to her study on wetlands.  Proulx wrote this book to determine “what meaning did these peatlands have, not only for humans, but for all other life on the earth?” 

I began the book without understanding the difference between a fen, a bog or a swamp.  A fen is “a peat-forming wetland that is at least partly fed by waters that have contact with mineral soils, such as rivers and streams.”  Fens tend to be deep.  A bog is “a peat-making wetland with a water source that is not in contact with mineral soil,” such as rainfall.  Bogs are shallower than fens.  A swamp is “a peat-forming wetland that can support shrubs and trees – even forests.”  Swamps also are shallower than fens.  

So, why are wetlands important?  Wetlands are highly productive ecosystems, comparable to rainforests and coral reefs.  By regulating water flow, wetlands dramatically lessen the impact of both floods and droughts. They provide habitat for all manner of fish, birds, mammals, insects, reptiles and amphibians.  And they do all of these things while storing massive amounts of carbon in their abundant vegetation, making safeguarding wetlands a valuable natural climate solution.  Wetlands are located throughout the world. 

Proulx writes that “the history of wetlands is the history of their destruction.”  Over the past centuries, humans have strived to eliminate fens, bogs and swamps.  Regarding fens, Proulx focuses on England.  “The persistent and fatal draining of the English fens over three hundred years is an example of how key parts of an ancient natural countryside were gradually but deliberately engineered out of existence.”  Fens were a place of rich diversity.  “Today less than 1 percent of the original fens remain.” 

Proulx gives the reader a geographic tour of wetland destruction, and describes a common scenario that “has been repeated the world over:  swathes of fen, bog or swamp are deemed too wet for agriculture and the cry goes up that for the public good it must be drained.  But the new lands then usually became the property of developers and big agriculturists or ranchers – public good neatly sidestepped.”  She describes how wetlands were destroyed in America over the past centuries.  Unfortunately, the recent Supreme Court ruling will add to this destruction.  Wetland destruction comes in many forms, including “sediment deposition patterns, fertilizer runoff, spilled and leaking chemicals, increasing floods, storms, droughts, fires and today’s rising sea level.”  When wetlands are destroyed, so too are the multitude of living creatures within the wetlands.  Proulx writes that “in the last fifty years more than half of the bird, mammal and amphibian population have dwindled into memory or teeter on the edge of the extinction cliff.” 

Proulx’s global tour of wetland destruction includes Brazil, where wetlands are under “massive attack on three fronts,” including authorized and criminal deforestation, the degradation that comes with road construction, cattle ranching, and large-scale agriculture, as well as increasing drought and heat from climate change.  “The Amazon is now emitting more CO₂ than it sequesters.”  Australia’s 2020 draught-caused fires due to climate change resulted in over one billion animals being killed.  To the north, the warming of the Arctics’ frozen wetlands is releasing copious amounts of methane.  “Methane is eighty times more powerful than carbon dioxide in its ability to push the warming of the world.”  With global warming, “greenhouse gases long held below the surface are escaping, adding exponentially to the crisis by creating a positive climate feedback,” which is already looking to be irreversible. 

Fen, Bog and Swamp includes many tangents.  In her chapter on bogs, Proulx describes how human bodies are preserved in bogs.  Proulx also chronicles Roman artifacts preserved in bogs, and springboards from this to stories about Roman battles.  Proulx provides the history of multiple swamps, including the most famous swamp in America, the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina.  Proulx also describes the Great Black Swamp “that covered much of Ohio and parts of Michigan and Indiana” and was drained for farming.  Proulx’s explains how mangrove swamps are one of the earths most important ecosystems “because they form a bristling wall that stabilizes land’s edge and protects shorelines from hurricanes and erosion.”  Proulx writes how “climate researchers see mangrove swamps as crucially important front-line defenses against rising seawater and as superior absorbers of CO₂, five times more efficient than tropical forests.”  Yet, mangrove swamps are in deep trouble and seeing a “slow death” around the world.

As far as ideas on how to reverse wetland-destruction trends, Proulx doesn’t offer a lot of hope, writing “humans are exceedingly good at construction and destruction but pitifully inadequate at restoring the natural world.  It’s just not our thing.”  However, Proulx does report on how ‘rights of nature’ is gaining international standing as a legal concept.

The first chapter of Fen, Bog and Swamp is titled “Discursive Thoughts on Wetlands.”  Unfortunately, I thought that this title accurately fit the entire book, with Proulx rambling on many tangents, some interesting, some not.  Sadly, I was a little disappointed.  But I still love Proulx as one of my all-time favorite fiction writers.

Reviewer Opinion:  Just ok.

Reviewer Rating of Book:  Thumb sideways