Dickenson Easement

Cherry Valley, Ashtabula County
137-acre conservation easement

The Dickenson Easement protects the water quality of Pymatuning Creek. The stream-side forests, shrub swamps, floodplain meadows and marshes filter agricultural run-off from agricultural fields located upstream from the preserve.

There are several beaver dams on the main stream of Pymatuning Creek within the Dickenson Easement. In addition to filtering silts from the stream, the wetlands above the beaver dams sustain several outstanding natural communities. High-quality greater bur-reed marshes are present above the beaver dams. Marsh Wrens nest within the bur-reed marshes and the marshes may sustain American Bittern, Least Bittern, Sora Rail, Virginia Rail and Snipe. The marshes on the Dickenson Easement are very similar to those on the McCoy Preserve where the bitterns, rails and snipe are currently known to nest.

Fine quality Aquatic Bed Communities are present within the pools upstream from the beaver dams. The only extant population of the globally rare Hill’s pondweed (Potamogeton hillii) on Pymatuning Creek is present within a large aquatic bed just above the northernmost beaver dam on the Dickenson Easement. This State Endangered pondweed has a G3 Global Rank and is known to occur at only one other place in Ohio — at beaver ponds on the Fern Lake/Lake Kelso outlet south of Pond Road in Geauga County.