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As we prepare to celebrate National Pollinator Week, we at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are proud to share a host of relatively easy ways all of us can help pollinators, especially by creating more habitat. Even small patches of flowering plants across the landscape can add up to be a big help.
But what about small patches of habitat across the waterscape?
These days, conservation partners are experimenting with a new way to create habitat by installing “floating wetlands” in ponds, lakes and rivers. Buoyant structures that support aquatic vegetation – essentially non-stationary islands – serve a dual purpose. The roots and other submerged parts of the plants filter excessive nutrients and toxins from the water while above-water plant growth serves as ideal habitat for pollinators and birds.
Floating wetland experiments have been launched and studied in various places around the globe for a few decades, but the sound benefits of this innovation are not yet broadly utilized. In the United States, metropolitan areas such as Baltimore, Chicago and Boston have spearheaded these conservation measures with noteworthy success in cleaning up and beautifying urban waterways.
Missouri lives up to its nickname
In the midwest, the Missouri Department of Conservation is living up to its nickname as the “Show-Me State,” leading the way with its own experimental floating wetlands and making it possible for others to give them a try.
“We’re promoting a cost-share program and marshaling technical assistance to encourage others to create floating wetlands,” said Frank Nelson, wetland systems coordinator for the Missouri Department of Conservation. “While we hope to eventually work with farmers and other landowners across the state, initial experiments began on publicly owned ponds and lakes in and around Springfield.”
Nelson and his colleagues have been studying how these nature-based solutions provide multiple benefits in places like Baltimore’s inner harbor, with sizeable floating wetlands created by the National Aquarium, and Chicago’s Wild Mile, an Urban Rivers floating ecopark.
A nature-based solution for fish hatcheries
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Neosho National Fish Hatchery in southwest Missouri is also serving as an experimental site for smaller scale floating wetlands that are more like what a landowner with farm ponds could create.
Located in the heart of Neosho, Missouri, the hatchery is a community gathering place with a park-like setting that includes two large ponds where young fish are reared after their initial growing period in indoor facilities. Neosho hatchery’s Friends group already beautified the grounds with native flower gardens to support pollinator conservation, so floating wetlands are a natural extension of these efforts.
The Neosho experiment may prove to be a valuable solution for a common challenge many other fish hatcheries face: the growth of algae in outdoor aquaculture ponds. According to Assistant Hatchery Manager Nathan Eckert, floating wetlands have the potential to significantly improve water quality in Neosho’s ponds, which are susceptible to algal blooms that deplete oxygen from the water.
“We’re excited to try the floating wetlands as a way to knock back the ‘scuzz,’” said Eckert, noting the project’s cost-effectiveness and potential to reduce the need for labor-intensive algae control methods.
The Missouri Department of Conservation is matching the Neosho Friends group’s investment of $2,500, while the hatchery is contributing about $2,000 more to create about 300 square feet of wetlands and shoreline baskets for the hatchery’s 1-acre trout-rearing pond. Construction and installation was completed in May 2026. The Friends group plans to monitor and maintain them year-round for at least 5 years to fully assess results.
Making a difference, one garden at a time
Neosho hatchery’s floating wetlands and shoreline baskets include more than a dozen native plants for pollinators, such as:
- Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata), which attracts bumblebees and other bees, some rare. When this plant forms dense colonies, it also provides cover for fish and other aquatic life.
- Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), host plant for monarch butterflies.
- Cardinal flower(Lobelia cardinalis), which has a floral tube that matches up perfectly with a hummingbird’s slender bill, creating a near-exclusive pollination relationship.
- Shining bluestar (Amsonia illustris), attractive to both bees and swallowtail butterflies.
- Foxglove beard tongue (Penstemon digitalis), host plant with something for everyone: bees, moths, butterflies and hummingbirds.
If more communities like Springfield and Neosho try this conservation innovation, more and more landowners will see floating wetlands as yet another way to create native pollinator gardens, with an added bonus: habitat for both watery and winged wonders of nature.
