Typha angustifolia, or narrowleaf cattail, was introduced to North America in the dry ballast of European ships during the 19th century. Where it overlaps with the native broadleaf cattail, they produce a hybrid known as Typha x glauca. Lishawa called both the narrowleaf and hybrid cattails \u201cvery aggressive wetland invaders.\u201d<\/p>\n
While beavers are known for their ability to drastically change their ecosystems, particularly by building dams that regulate water flow, muskrats can substantially alter vegetation structure. They do so by cutting invasive cattails underwater, removing a stem that serves as a snorkel for the plant,\u00a0allowing it to transfer oxygen from the atmosphere into its roots.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In areas densely packed with tall cattails, muskrats create a \u201cpatchwork\u201d of small openings that allow plants of different heights to grow. That, in turn, creates habitat for diverse native wildlife.<\/p>\n
![\"Muskrat](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CTC-L-muskrat-lodges-Emiquon-Preserve.jpg\")
Muskrat lodges, which provide habitat for all forms of wetland creatures, pepper the landscape at the Emiquon Preserve in the early morning hours, Sept. 2, 2015, near downstate Lewistown. (Anthony Souffle\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n
It is something Lishawa noticed after years of research in a freshwater marsh on Michigan\u2019s Upper Peninsula, when the local rodent population boomed as decadelong low water levels in the Great Lakes rebounded. The animals, he said, were very apparently \u201caffecting the vegetation \u2014 and likely increasing the biodiversity of the site.\u201d<\/p>\n
His team shared the observation with their local partners in the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. \u201cAnd they were like, \u2018Yeah, of course, that\u2019s what muskrats do,’\u201d Lishawa said.<\/p>\n
The species holds cultural significance for the Great Lakes Ojibwe Nations, in whose creation stories the common muskrat \u2014 Wazhashk in the Indigenous language \u2014 plays an important role. Even though it dies in the process, Wazhashk helps restore the Earth after the Great Flood when it retrieves a \u201clittle ball of earth\u201d that would later be shaped into Turtle Island, now known as North America.<\/p>\n
Equipped with this ecological wisdom, researchers from Loyola, the tribe and the University of Connecticut gathered data and found<\/a> that muskrats reduced invasive hybrid cattails by 71% where the animals were present in the marsh that connects the Munuscong River with the St. Marys River, located between lakes Superior and Huron.<\/p>\n The removal of the tall plants also reduced the cover of European frogbit, another nonnative plant with floating leaves that Lishawa said likes to grow \u201cin and amongst the cattails.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn (the creation) story, Wazhashk\u2019s contribution and sacrifice allowed for others to have a place to live,\u201d the study authors wrote. \u201c(It) illustrates the important role that muskrats play in modifying their environment and providing habitat for other organisms.\u201d<\/p>\n Because muskrats are not present in all wetlands, especially given their population decline<\/a> in the United States over the last few decades, the researchers also tried to replicate the rodents\u2019 impact on cattails by mowing the plants below the waterline.<\/p>\n \u201cThere might be circumstances,\u201d Lishawa said, \u201cwhere you would like to see the effects of this organism, but you don\u2019t have them there to work with. So, we wanted to see if we could create conditions that reflected what the muskrats did.\u201d<\/p>\n They found that a human management strategy that mimicked the rodent\u2019s cutting method could have a similar effect in reducing the invasive plant\u2019s cover where a muskrat population is not present.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is something that I, personally, would like to explore a lot more. I mean, as far as I know, we\u2019re the only people who have ever really tried doing this,\u201d Lishawa said.<\/p>\n Replicating beaver dams has been more widely used in ecosystem restoration, and he hopes mimicking muskrat activity leads to similar success.<\/p>\n \u201cAcross North America, there\u2019s been this awakening about the ecological role of beavers<\/a>,\u201d Lishawa said. \u201cI think that there\u2019s a parallel there with muskrats.\u201d<\/p>\n Beavers are also being live-trapped and moved to where they can help restore degraded ecosystems. Lishawa said there could be potential for a similar effort catching muskrats where they are considered a nuisance and releasing them in natural sites where a population could increase biodiversity or address invasive cattails.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that\u2019s a real possibility, and I think that could definitely help enhance their positive ecological effects,\u201d Lishawa said. To be an effective restoration strategy, it would likely need to be evaluated and implemented on a site-by-site basis.<\/p>\n Under an ambitious restoration plan, Emiquon Nature Preserve wetlands reconnecting to the Illinois River<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Enlisting the help of muskrats and imitating them could become part of larger efforts to conserve and restore coastal wetlands, which once spanned more than 1 million acres<\/a> in the Great Lakes region \u2014 but of which only about half remain due to development, drainage for agriculture and other human interventions. Often, remaining wetlands have been degraded by pollution and invasive species.<\/p>\n In Illinois, urban development and agriculture have destroyed as much as 90% of the state\u2019s original marshy, swampy land<\/a>, including inland and coastal wetlands.<\/p>\n Restoration and conservation work in these ecosystems has become more crucial as federal protections have been challenged in recent years.<\/p>\n The U.S. Supreme Court stripped protections<\/a> from inland wetlands in the 2023 Sackett v. EPA, allowing private property development where there is no \u201ccontinuous surface connection\u201d to permanent bodies of water. After the decision, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that roughly 72% of remaining wetlands in the state are no longer protected<\/a> by the federal Clean Water Act.<\/p>\n In the case of narrowleaf and hybrid cattails, they have been a part of the landscape for so long that many Americans are unaware their presence in these ecosystems indicates degradation, Lishawa said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s this concept, in some ecological literature, about shifting baselines,\u201d he said. \u201cOur intuitive sense of what a wetland looks like includes this species that 200 years ago was not there.\u201d<\/p>\n More recent invaders such as frogbit, as well as the common reed, often cause the most concern among conservation scientists<\/a> due to their dramatic increase over the last few decades. However, the long-standing and often accepted presence of invasive cattails in North America makes addressing the issue all the more challenging.<\/p>\n But Lishawa and his colleagues \u2014 Team\u00a0Typha \u2014 want to change that.<\/p>\n Doing so will require more research to evaluate how other organisms respond to the systematic removal of cattails, whether that is by muskrats or humans acting like muskrats.<\/p>\n \u201cDepending on what we find, it could lead to more support for this type of management,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CTC-L-muskrat-Big-Marsh-Park-02.jpg\")
A muskrat at Big Marsh Park in Chicago, May 7, 2020. (E. Jason Wambsgans\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n