VF Final Report for Pen Pals

The Virtual Foundation - your donation makes it happen

Specialists Training for Wetlands Restoration

This project was made possible through a donation by the Trust for Mutual Understanding and various sources collected by the participants.

Report on the Training Exchange by Employees of the Tytuvenai Regional Park

Two employees of the Tytuvenai Regional Park came to the United States for training, 7-21 August, 1999. The Tytuvenai Regional Park is in the central part of Lithuania and is unique for its vast wetlands. Because of this, the primary purpose of the training was to learn how wetlands are cared for and how they are presented for ecological education and tourism, in the US. Training sessions were organized by ECOLOGIA, who also provided 50% of the financial backing.

During the exchange, the paricipants worked with Ecoscience, a private firm, whose mission is wetlands restoration and remediation. With Ecoscience's help, we learned to recognize and evaluate wetland types; delineate wetland borders, using the Geographic Positioning System (GPS); and, in a laboratory, we used the latest techniques to increase the number of wetland plants growing in a test tube.

The other half of the exchange was about the protection and care of wetlands and learning about environmental protection in the United States. We also were interested in ecological education and recreation. We met with various private and government institutions, whose mission is environmental protection. Among these were:

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Region III, Wetlands Division;
Employees of the Department of the Interior's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service;
A representative of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers;
Representatives of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection;
Employees of federal and state parks and wildlife preserves;
Employees of Tinicum Wildlife Refuge;
Representatives of the Monroe County Environmental Education Center (the most advanced in Pennsylvania) and county-sponsored regional wildlife rehabilitation center;
Private caretakers of land owned by the Nature Conservancy;
We visited many State Parks, camp sites and other recreational areas.

We also met with these environmentalist organizations:

A representative of the Audubon Society regional chapter;
Local and state represtenatives of the Nature Conservancy.

In Lithuania, the vast areas of exploited and neglected peat bogs show that in the near future, even in Lithuania, wetland remediation will become reality. The information about taking inventories of wetlands and their surrounding areas, wetland classification, propagation of the value of wetlands, the strengthening of wetlands protection laws, and the preparation and execution of wetlands restoration and remediation, which we gathered in the meetings we had and hands-on work we did, will be used in our own work. We will use our accumulated experiences in our work with ecological education, customer service and in organizing recreational activities.

Gintaras Matiukas, Director, Tytuvenai Regional Park
Roma Matiukiene, Manager, Tytuvenai Regional Park

Many thanks to our donors!