A tribe is buying farmland to flood it — on purpose

The Stillaguamish Tribe in Washington State—forced off their land by a 150-year-old treaty, only federally recognized in 1976—has spent years working to counteract the environmental damage that has threatened the region's wetlands.

Since the treaty, the land, converted to single-resource farms, had become bereft of much of the ecosystem that supported local life.

So the Stillaguamish found a solution to turn the tide: financing. They spent 15 years purchasing 2,000 acres of former dairy land, restoring the wetlands, fish, and wildlife that once provided lifeblood to the region.

Reflecting on the developments, Scott Boyd, a Stillaguamish tribal member and fisheries manager, told NPR in an interview, "Before, it was a dairy operation, and now it's a big tidal marsh... It is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow to buy back the land that we essentially traded for the resource, the fish, but it's what we have to do to get things back on track."