Page 27 - ACTL Journal_Sum24

Bruce Kania is an inventor, an entrepreneur, a historian, and a fisherman who focus- es on product inventions, product development, and licensing. He is named on some seventy patent applications, almost all of which are groundbreaking inventions that positively impact the lives of all those around us and our world.
Bruce is both the CEO and the research director of Floating Island International, a small business on the banks of the Yellowstone River in Montana that began in 2005 as a production facility for one of his inventions, artificial floating islands. His island devices mimic the water quality and the habitat of a wetland. To date, there are more than 12,000 floating islands around the world, from Singapore to South Africa to the United States and Canada.
These islands are artificial, plantable devices that provide a broad range of benefits for water treatment, habitat creation, and aesthetic benefits, everything from stormwater management to sewage lagoon treatment to decorative ponds. But even the decorative ponds are more than eye candy. These islands can take a murky, algae-filled waterway and reestablish a natural process that turns the water alive, one that is capable of sustain- ing airbreathing life from top to bottom. That means fish, but it also means humanity.
Bruce’s presentation at the Spring Meeting in Phoenix focused on a new use for his floating islands, a positive and nature-based solution to climate change that is entirely based on what he and his company have learned from nature’s model. The critical factor is the emerging recognition that the single largest source of methane occurring on planet Earth today is nutrient impaired fresh water. The application of the floating island technology to impaired waterways can reduce methane to nearly undetectable levels.
The model for Floating Island International’s solution was derived from a study of nat- ural floating islands near the Upper Peninsula in Wisconsin that support tens of thou- sands of trees. But beyond that, the biocomplexity and the biodiversity that happens on the Wisconsin islands are incredible. Nature, in the form of trees and plants, takes nutrients from the water and recycles them into the food web. This is nature’s model of how things can be done around the world internationally.
The Wisconsin islands are incredible fish magnets. While researching the islands, Bruce caught thirty-four large mouth bass in about two hours fishing the perimeter of the islands. The area is also home to the world record muskellunge or muskie, a species of large freshwater predatory fish native to North America, which is probably the apex predator for fish. He points to the definitive link behind this biocomplexity, the fish, the water quality, and its testament to nature’s model at work.
SUMMER 2024 JOURNAL 26