BRYANT – Surrounded by rolling prairie and wetlands, hikers at Loblolly Marsh Wetland Preserve on Saturday watched herons glide through the sky, listened to songbirds, and learned about wildflowers and native plants.

About nine visitors, some of whom came from as far away as southern Michigan and Indianapolis, took advantage of the guided tours, which are offered at the restored marsh about 10 minutes south of the Limberlost State Historic Site at Geneva.

The Geneva site, located about 40 miles south of Fort Wayne in Adams County, was once the home of Gene Stratton-Porter, Indiana’s acclaimed conservationist and author whose work, both fiction and non-fiction, incorporated observations she made while studying the natural world.

One wetland made famous by Stratton-Porter – the 13,000-acre Limberlost Swamp, that spanned from northeast of Geneva to southeast of the small town – was drained.

Because of a restoration project that began around 1993, visitors can again see the sort of landscape and wildlife that captured Stratton-Porter’s passion at Loblolly Marsh, so named for a small stream.

About 1,500 acres have been acquired for the project, which is led by Ken Brunswick, a regional ecologist with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources Division of Nature Preserves. He is manager of the Limberlost Swamp Remembered Project.

Brunswick’s effort, which won him a national award for conservation and restoration this year from the Environmental Law Institute, included locating, and breaking or plugging, the countless tiles that had been installed to keep water drained from the land when it was used for agriculture.

Despite the effort, tiles are still being found, and some of the plugs fail, as was explained to hikers by Bill Hubbard, the Limberlost Cabin naturalist and wetlands educator who led the tour.

Pointing to an area of dry, cracked mud, Hubbard told hikers the “pothole,” which was formed by glaciers, normally would contain about 15 inches of water and a plenitude of amphibians; however, the plug that kept the water from draining failed recently.

Helping Hubbard guide curious hikers was Carl Yoder, president of Swamp Remembered, who used his wooden hiking stick as a pointer as he identified native plants and wildflowers, including black-eyed Susan, yellow coneflower and hemlock.

Yoder also indicated less-friendly non-native plant species, including sweet clover, chicory and Queen Anne’s lace. The restoration also includes efforts to eradicate problematic invasive plants, including reed canary grass, which Yoder said may have been planted by a farmer to prevent erosion, and garlic mustard, which grows in the wooded areas of the marsh.

Hubbard pointed out some less attractive sights – including scat from a raccoon and another deposit possibly left by a coyote – while hikers followed him to Woody Retreat, a pond named for the wood ducks sometimes seen there.

The pond’s distance from the roads lessens interruptions from man-made noise, Hubbard noted.

“It’s kind of peaceful back here,” he said.

bmanley@jg.net