Wetlands Reverse Long Decline -- If Golf Course Ponds Count

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Wetlands Reverse Long Decline -- If Golf Course Ponds Count

 

March 31, 2006 — By John Heilprin, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — More people building ponds for golf courses and subdivisions or

to retain stormwater and wastewater helped create the nation's first net gain in

wetlands in a half-century of government record-keeping.

 

About 5 percent of the contiguous United States, or almost 108 million acres,

was covered with wetlands as of 2004, the Interior Department's Fish and

Wildlife Service reported Thursday. It found a net gain of 191,800 acres of

wetlands since the last report in 1997.

 

Bush administration officials cast the report as evidence that the nation has

turned a corner on years of wetlands losses. State wetland managers and advocacy

groups for recreation and environmental causes all called the report

misleading.

 

The Fish and Wildlife Service reported a gain of 715,300 acres of shallow-water

wetlands -- mainly artificial varieties of ponds -- which offset a continued

loss of 523,500 acres of marshes, swamps, and other more traditional and natural

wetlands that are the so-called nurseries of life.

 

Swamps, marshes, fens, tidal marshes, peatlands and other water-laden ecosystems

filter pollutants and sediments, control flooding and protect against coastal

erosion. They also provide clean water and homes for fish, shellfish and

wildlife, and stopping points for migratory birds.

 

The report measures strictly the acreage, not their quality, and was completed

before hurricanes Katrina and Rita ate up the Gulf Coast. Interior Secretary

Gale Norton and Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns cast the report as a partial

fulfillment of President Bush's 2004 Earth Day pledge to move beyond his

father's " no net loss " policy on wetlands.

 

Bush promised then to restore or protect as much as 3 million acres of wetlands

over the next five years.

 

" A significant amount of the increase has been in ponds, " Norton said. " People

like having ponds as an amenity. ... Even ponds that are not a high quality of

wetlands are better than not having wetlands. "

 

Norton said that while the overall state of the nation's wetlands remains

" precarious, " the report suggests that Bush administration restoration efforts

are working. Johanns lauded farmers, ranchers and others voluntarily doing

federally funded private conservation work.

 

Others saw a different picture.

 

" Unfortunately, the report's seemingly good conclusion that the nation has

achieved 'no net loss of wetlands' is misleading, " said Jeanne Christie,

executive director of the Association of State Wetland Managers Inc.

 

" The 'no net loss of wetlands' is largely due to the proliferation of ponds,

lakes and other 'deepwater habitats,' as the report points out, " she said.

" These ponds include ornamental lakes for residential developments, stormwater

retention ponds, wastewater treatment lagoons, aquaculture ponds and golf course

water hazards. "

 

Don Young, executive vice president of Ducks Unlimited, said the report

" diminishes the significance " of the damage to natural wetlands that is causing

" fewer waterfowl, diminished wildlife in general, less flood protection, less

seafood and lower water quality. "

 

The lower 48 states had an estimated 220 million acres of wetlands and streams

in pre-colonial times, but 115 million acres of them had been destroyed by 1997.

 

The estimates are based on a statistical sampling of 4,700 plots of land, each

four square miles in size, that have been studied since 1954.

 

On Monday, the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency

proposed new regulations promoting companies that specialize in creating

wetlands. The proposal is intended to encourage developers who destroy wetlands

or streams and are required to replace them to pay other businesses -- about 300

" mitigation bankers " -- to do the work.

 

Congressional investigators have found that the Corps of Engineers could not

ensure the 40,000 acres of wetlands restoration work required each year since

1983 is actually taking place.

 

Source: Associated Press

 

 

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