Karl Wenner turned 70 acres of his family's barley farm into a wetland in 2021 - four years later, researchers pulled 50 adult-sized endangered fish out of the water he built.

  • 70 acres of working farmland converted into managed wetland
  • 140+ bird species recorded on the property since 2021
  • 50 adult-sized endangered suckers found in a 2025 survey
  • Phosphorus pollution cut to safe levels within months of construction

Why a barley farmer built a marsh

Lakeside Farms sits on the edge of Upper Klamath Lake in southern Oregon, land that had grown barley for nearly a century. When Wenner became a co-owner in 2017, he found the flood-prone corner of the property was leaking high concentrations of phosphorus into the lake - a nutrient that fuels harmful algae blooms.

Rather than keep farming the wettest 70 acres of the 400-acre property, Wenner worked with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and local conservation partners to re-engineer the land. Dikes, channels and shallow nesting islands went in during 2021, and a natural spring did the rest, germinating marsh seed that had sat dormant in the old farmland for decades.

What the wetland became

Ducks, geese and swans arrived almost immediately - federal wildlife records counted more than 20,000 birds using the site in a single fall. At least 140 bird species have now been logged there, alongside otters, beavers, turtles and muskrats, on land that a few years earlier grew nothing but a single grain crop.

The bigger story is underwater. The Klamath Basin is home to two federally endangered fish found nowhere else on Earth: the Lost River sucker, known to the Klamath Tribes as c'waam, and the shortnose sucker, or koptu. Both species have declined for decades largely because young fish rarely survive to adulthood. Conservationists began stocking juvenile suckers in the farm's ponds, using the restored wetland as a nursery that mimics the shallow habitat that once ringed the lake before most of it was drained.

The 2025 discovery

In May 2025, researchers partially drained the wetland to see what had survived. They pulled out 50 adult-sized suckers, some measuring up to 16 inches - evidence that fish raised in the artificial marsh had grown to maturity in a basin where juvenile survival is usually close to zero.

"You set the stage and Mother Nature takes over. It's just a magical thing to see." - Karl Wenner, co-owner of Lakeside Farms

Researchers caution the sample doesn't prove a self-sustaining population exists yet, and genetic testing is still needed to confirm exactly which fish were recovered. But the wetland is already doing double duty: filtering phosphorus before it reaches Upper Klamath Lake, and giving two of Oregon's rarest fish a real shot at survival.

A model other farmers are watching

Wetlands like this one are increasingly rare. Roughly 80% of the world's wetlands have vanished, and in the Klamath Basin - once described as the "Everglades of the West" - more than 95% have been drained or diverted. Migratory bird counts on the basin's lakes fell from roughly 5.8 million in 1958 to a small fraction of that in recent decades, according to Audubon reporting on the region's water crisis.

Wenner still farms most of the remaining 330 acres of Lakeside Farms, and he isn't alone - other landowners in the Klamath Basin have reportedly shown interest in similar rotating-wetland projects, betting that restoration and agriculture don't have to cancel each other out.