>> This year it was November.

The 8th.

Around County man has spent nearly 50 years traveling the globe building and restoring wetlands.

Kentucky Edition met up with Tom by the cows are in Morehead at a wetland.

He helped develop to talk about the importance of these ecosystems and why he has dedicated his life to making sure they are around for generations to come.

>> Many people fail to realize how important Wetland Park Fire Mont when there's a club.

The wetlands gather that water and allow to soak into the ground there like a giant sponge that water just soaks into the ground and that recharges groundwater and groundwater is what we use for drinking.

So really well as a replenishing groundwater, which is so important runoff from most mine sites can be quite contaminated with heavy metals and other pollutants.

Wetlands can clean that runoff.

Wetlands are like a giant coffee filter.

They remove pollutants from the water and the water that comes out of a wetland is much cleaner.

So I've been building wetlands to lower salt concentrations in the water.

I've been building wetlands to remove heavy metals from mine sites.

And here's something to remember.

If you take dirty water and run it through a wetland is going to come out clean air and a lot of the clean water is going to soak into the ground and replenish groundwater.

Also, wetlands are important for flood control.

Many communities here in Kentucky are being hit by flooding and it's getting worse as we heard and surfaces with asphalt and blacktop.

But wetland restoration.

What happens is that these wetlands can collect the water during the flood and slowly injected into the ground while providing habitat for fish and wildlife.

They're just tremendous ecosystems.

I started building wetlands in 1978.

I built over 3,000 wetlands in my career and 27 different states.

3 Canadian provinces.

I build wetlands in Taiwan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and what I'm interested in doing is teaching people how they can protect wetlands and of the wetlands are gone, how they can bring them back.

So now I teach classes all across North America showing people hard to design and build a wetland at a low cost.

I estimate that I've built a little over 2000 wetlands in Kentucky over the years over 1000 of those were in the Daniel Boone National Forest.

And it's really enjoyable to come back and to look at these wetland areas and to see all the plants that are growing.

Plus, all the while, a species that are using them.

What I've learned about health and the environment generally it will heal itself.

We humans have changed the landscape so much with heavy equipment, asphalt and concrete that we need active management to restore these ecosystems.

No, I'm not saying should build a wetland everywhere, but there are many places where you can build a wetland.

So many wetlands have been drained around Kentuckyian filled in in surrounding states that you can spend your entire life building wetlands and never make up for all these losses.

So, no, it's impossible to have too many wetlands.

I build them everywhere.

I build them and farm fields.

I build them on ridge tops and woods.

I build wetlands on mined areas building at schools for environmental education.

I've even built them from tennis courts that are being decommissioned and roads that are being reclaimed.

So, yes, we know the technology to build a wetland anywhere.

I've studied.

Wetlands have been built by humans.

They were hand dug and the claim was compacted by hand by humans.

2000 years ago.

So when I say we can build a wetland that will last 2000 years, there's proof other people have done it before us.

We're using the same techniques we can bring back these ecosystems.

>> According to buy a house or several endangered species of bats, native to Kentucky