Wetlands need to be protected

They’re home again! The first pair of our migrating sandhill cranes touched down at their winter home on the Old Chapoton Ranch Monday afternoon.

You could hear them before you could see them. Along the shores of Starvation Cove the sound of their piercing guttural calls blasted like a shofar, calling us to prepare for the fall and winter seasons of our celebration of life.

About sunset, while standing on my porch on the east shoreline of Eckert’s Bayou, you could hear them. It sounded like there were hundreds of them.

A quick focus with my spotting scope revealed them on their annual roost. To my surprise, the calls had come from only this one pair. There will be many more following them with each succeeding norther as the more frequent winter winds drive them further south.

This is such a joyous time of year. The harvest moon last week made it seem like daytime on the golden fields of our Spartina marsh. The marsh in Starvation Cove had been a vibrant green, then slowly turned bright yellow and is now, finally, a rich golden brown.

All of the strain, all of the anxiety and frustration of our battle to save these prolific wetlands and their connected prairies from destruction by developers are now rewarded by this fall harvest so beautifully ushered in by our migrant friends.

With them come glistening strings of speckled trout and redfish. And the flounder have begun their run, chasing schools of mudfish that sprinkle the top of the water in their frantic effort to escape.

The crabs get bigger and meaner, knowing they will soon have to give up their scavenging to burrow into the mud for the winter weeks ahead.

My first batch of oysters succumbed as succulent and salty treats, devoured in this cornucopia festival of seafood delights. And they will only get bigger and fatter as it gets colder.

But they and their kind will continue to diminish as our marshes and wetlands and their connected prairies continue to be destroyed by draglines, dredges, subsidence and rising oceans.

This is what keeps us fighting. We all have our different points of view and perspectives about what makes life worth living. But these changes in our seasons and the disappearance of our wetlands and their connected prairies are the clarion call that keeps us vigilant and fighting against the destruction of our wetlands.

We taste and see these intimate glimpses into an awe-inspiring universe that compel us to give of ourselves to keep this unique part of our heritage, this cradle of life. We are aware of this fragile balance, which is becoming more complex than we ever understood before.

These beautiful birds rapture our human spirit and their signature on the land binds us to keep them free. Their disappearance will deaden even more of the surviving vestiges of our humanity.

We are more connected now to our creator than we have ever known before.

Robert Moore, an attorney, lives in Galveston.