Two decades ago, a lightbulb went off in Ed Zink’s head.
Looking across the road at a vast stretch of parched, dull land scarred by past farming, he superimposed an alternate vision: a vibrant green landscape, restored to what it had once been.
He saw tall brush growing wild, elm trees stretching high, willow trees in summer dress leaning over the riverbank and monarchs’ delicate orange wings glinting between milkweed stalks.
Now, in 2025, Ed Zink’s vision has come to fruition. The Animas River Wetlands, a 65-acre wetland bank along U.S. Highway 550 just north of Durango on the Waterfall Ranch property, has almost been completely restored.
Ed Zink died in 2019, but his wife, Patti Zink, continued their work. Now, years later, the final phases of the project are almost complete.
Diverse colonies of sedge, rushes, willows, wild roses and cottonwoods now populate the land.
One mile of the streambed has been restored, and 2,000 feet of riverbank have been stabilized.
Birds have come back.
At the beginning of the project, the Durango Bird Club identified 27 species in the area. Today, there are 131.
Patti Zink is hopeful all the mitigation work at Animas Wetland Bank will be completed in about two years. Then, she said she’ll be able to sit back, relax and wait for the customers to appear.
“I’m almost 69. I’m hoping by the time I’m 75 I’m not out here growing wetlands, but it all depends on, you know, Mother Nature,” Zink said.
In 2006, Ed and Patti Zink purchased the 50-acre property across from their home on the other side of U.S. Highway 550 as a business investment.
Continuing to grow hay on it was not an option, and developing it was not what the community wanted, or really, what the Zinks wanted, Zink said.
They settled on the third option: wetland banking, an unlikely blend of market system capitalism and environmental conservation.
“Ed wanted to have the land be natural. He knew it had been wetlands because he grew up here, he knew how to deal with the water. And he was a risk-taker,” Zink said. “He kind of never saw the downside – and I was not as optimistic, I will tell you that.”
Wetland banks, introduced by the federal government in the late 1980s, allow developers whose projects affect wetland ecosystems to purchase mitigation credits. Those credits help offset environmental harm by funding the restoration or preservation of wetlands elsewhere in the same watershed.
“The idea for the bank is to have different habitat types on the site – enough of the kinds that might be impacted around here in the watershed,” Zink said.
As towns grow and development expands, wetlands are often destroyed or permanently altered. Yet they play a vital ecological role by providing habitat and breeding grounds for mammals, birds, reptiles and insects, while also filtering water and protecting against flooding.
Following the passage of the Clean Water Act, the federal government established a “no-net-loss” mitigation system: Once a piece of land becomes part of a wetland bank, it is permanently off the market.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the military’s engineering branch, oversees the program and is involved in every step of the process.
And it’s not a simple one.
Before they could break ground in 2007, the Zinks enlisted environmental consultant Sean Moore to help them navigate the red tape and prepare an agreement with the Corps.
The plan – which Patti keeps in a thick three-ring binder – is nearly 2 inches thick and outlines service areas, performance benchmarks and a long-range maintenance strategy to preserve the wetlands in perpetuity.
“I had to put it in a three-ring binder because we used it so much,” she said. “When it was just in the spiral-bound format, it started getting a little tattered.”
The Zinks were initially approved for 11 phases. In early 2019, they received approval for two more.
“Ed was having so much fun doing it,” Zink said. “So we got two more phases approved in February 2019. And then he died in October of 2019. So that was bad timing on his part.”
What exactly does transforming acres of hayfield into a viable, self-sustaining ecosystem entail?
According to Patti Zink, “a lot of trial and error.”
The plants that populate the wetlands are also the weeds that plague homeowners year after year.
But they’re critical to the ecosystem, and as they walk through the completed areas, Zink and Moore point out the various plant species that were thoughtfully placed and grown.
Wetland seeds are microscopic – around the size of a single poppy seed, but more delicate.
To sow it, Ed Zink got creative. Like hay, he bundled up stalks of rush weed into bales before spreading them across the area, and breaking the bundles.
He bought old uprooted cotton wood trees from a developer and piled them up in the water, where the trees attracted insects and acted as a breeding ground, Zink said.
And to grow elder box trees, the Zinks would take their grandchildren to the wetlands to “play and learn,” which encompassed picking elder box seeds and collecting them in 5-gallon buckets before scattering them around the acreage, Zink said.
This summer, Patti Zink has struggled to coax a difficult patch of willow trees into growing, even after multiple rounds of troubleshooting.
But grappling with the unpredictable whims of nature, Ed’s strong suit, brings her closer to her husband.
And Zink said she has a new solution for the willow problem, brought to her by Ed.
“I heard a little voice from above, I swear it was Ed saying, ‘They need more water, Patty, you’re not giving them enough water,’” Zink said.
Although wetland banks serve to mitigate against the impacts infrastructure developments, it is a for-profit business model, Moore noted.
“A lot of people see it as a, ‘They're-taking-advantage-of-Mother Nature-to-make-money sort of thing,’ which is true, but it serves a purpose,” Moore said.
Before the banking program, developers did on-site mitigation, often in several smaller areas, referred to by Moore as the “postage stamp approach.”
Over time, he said, watersheds became dotted with small, scattered mitigation sites. While these patches helped offset some habitat loss, the approach proved less effective than hoped.
The banking system allows wetlands to be created in more conducive environments – and larger areas – which is more beneficial to the wildlife that calls it home, he said.
It is not an easy business to enter, according to Zink.
Wetlands are an unpredictable market, the demand comes and goes and it is not a service that one can advertise to increase sales, she said.
Animas Wetland Banks has sold 15 acres in the past two decades – largely to the Colorado Department of Transportation, the bank’s primary customer, Moore said.
“I laugh. I've got a granddaughter that’s 14 and she will be selling wetlands, I’m sure,” Zink said. “Hopefully, she will not be as old as I am.”
jbowman@durangoherald.com
