Farmers and developers destroyed more than 1 million acres of wetlands between 1985 and 1995 despite government vows to protect nature’s delicate device for controlling floods and pollution, government officials in Washington said.
The first comprehensive study of the nation’s wetlands since 1990–and the first to measure tougher protection policies–shows the net loss of wetlands averaged 117,000 acres a year during the decade. That’s down 60 percent from the dramatic rate of losses in the 1970s and 1980s but not the turnaround that had been desired.
“Although we’re headed in the right direction, the picture is not all roses,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We haven’t reached the goal of no net loss of wetlands.”
The “no net loss” policy was first advanced by the Bush administration, which promised aggressive protection of wetlands–a wide variety of watery habitats that support about a third of the country’s endangered species, serve as natural water purifiers, and nurture a vast array of plant life.
And while Clark promoted the latest figures as “exciting news” that demonstrate the Clinton administration’s commitment to wetlands protection, environmentalists said there is more cause for vigilance than cheering.
“We are still losing the equivalent of 12 football fields an hour, every day of the year, of flood-preventing, water purifying wetlands,” said Grady McCallie, of the National Wildlife Federation. “We have much more to do to protect people and nature.”
In California, state officials said 112,600 acres of wetlands have been enhanced, restored or created since 1993, when Gov. Pete Wilson signed an executive order implementing the state’s equivalent of a “no net loss” policy.
“If a person wants to fill an acre of wetlands, they are required to mitigate that either on or off the site,” said Craig Denisoff, a deputy assistant secretary with the state Resources Agency. “There are always going to be folks screaming about wetlands and the lack of wetlands protection out there. But in California, the debate has turned slightly to focus on our efforts to restore wetlands.”
Noting that wetlands were disappearing at an annual rate of 290,000 acres from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, Clark credited implementation of the federal Clean Water Act, increased public awareness, and expansion of state, local and private wetlands restoration programs for the brightening picture.
“The progress we have made to stem wetlands loss is substantial,” Clark said. “It shows that we are on the right track and for the first time in memory we are within reach of the `no net loss’ goal.”
But the amount of wetlands continues to shrink even though 78,000 acres of wetlands are restored annually, according to government figures.
Officials said agriculture was responsible for 79 percent of U.S. wetlands losses in the last decade, eating up some 965,000 acres.
That was despite a 1985 law that bars agricultural draining of wetlands. Other development was blamed for 15 percent of the losses.
The report said 29 percent of the wetland losses from 1985-95 occurred west of the Mississippi River with most of the losses–51 percent–occurring in the Southeast.
The Clinton administration announced in December that it would significantly tighten wetlands regulations, phasing out over two years the so-called “quickie” permits that had allowed developers to drain tens of thousands of acres of wetlands, 10 acres at a time.
Between 1780 and 1980, the contiguous United States lost 54 percent of its estimated 221 million original acres of wetlands–or about 60 acres an hour for 200 years. Now, about 100.9 million acres of wetlands remain.
“As wetlands declined in this country, so did our waterfowl population, so did the land’s ability to store floodwater, and so did much of our water quality as these mammoth natural filters began to vanish from the American landscape,” Clark said.
