In the heart of rural Minnesota, surrounded by some of the most heavily farmed and drained land in the Midwest, is a vast lake with water that is remarkably clear.
On Swan Lake, thick stands of bulrush and cattails stretch nearly a mile from shore and form narrow channels just wide enough to navigate a canoe. Inside those channels are gaps in the grasses, where wood ducks rest in the soft light of the setting sun until the sound of a paddle in the water flushes them out. The birds fly to open water at the center of the lake, where they join flocks and rafts of thousands of others. There they dive down to gorge on one of the finest caches of wild celery and sago pondweed in North America.
Once famous for duck hunting, Swan Lake has been brought to the brink of death time and again over the last 150 years. Conservationists have restored it to one of the healthiest lakes in Minnesota. Its plant life is thriving.
Swan was one of just 28 lakes out of 3,000 rated in Minnesota to receive a perfect 100 score for the condition of its plant life. The other 27 are lakes in pristine northern forests, with the majority in or near the Boundary Waters and Voyageurs National Park.
Swan Lake, in southern Nicollet County, is encircled by about 200,000 acres of corn and soybean fields, along with all the fertilizers, pesticides and drainage ditches that keep those fields farmable. The lake has at times been overrun by invasive carp and pet goldfish, its water turned into a cloudy pea-green stew. The landowners on its shore once fought all the way to the state Supreme Court to have the lake drained and turned into something more profitable.
Now it’s one of the great remnants of a lost prairie. Its recovery offers a blueprint for saving some of the state’s most troubled waters.
“Swan is definitely the poster child for how good a lake can be,” said Tori Drake, a wildlife lake specialist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.