Washington Post: U.S. Loss of Ecologically-Sensitive Wetlands Staggering

Editor’s Note:

The Gulf Seafood Institute supports restoring vital wetlands to the Gulf.  It is working with state and national legislators, as well as environmental groups in this effort.

by Darryl Fears/Washington Posts

Over a four-year span, the United States lost more than 360,000 acres of freshwater and saltwater wetlands to fierce storms, sea-level rise and booming development along the coasts, according to a newly released federal study.

The disappearance of so much grass and forest marsh on the edge of waterways is a disturbing sign that government projects to restore wetlands are failing to keep pace, environmentalists said, as storms intensify, the sea level creeps up and development paves the way for rising coastal populations.

Intertidal saltwater marches of the Gulf’s coastal watershed are disappearing at an alarming rate. Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Saltwater wetlands help buffer sea surges that cause flooding during powerful storms along the coasts — such as Hurricane Sandy last year — and freshwater wetlands soak up storm-water runoff that often causes sewers to overflow.

“They are getting it from all directions,” said Tom Dahl, lead author of the study funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

By researching wetland trends and other data, Dahl and Stedman determined that about 80,000 acres of wetlands disappeared each year in the years of the study, compared with 60,000 acres per year in the previous study.

The starkest decline was in the Gulf, which was roiled by several massive hurricanes, including Katrina, Rita and Ike, Dahl said. “They contributed to washing away some coastal salt-marsh area, piling sand on wetland, debris.

It was the number of storms and intensity of storms.Programs aimed at restoring wetlands have had moderate success, and the study’s authors agreed.They attributed an increase of acres in wetlands in the Great Lakes, South Carolina, Georgia and central Florida to such efforts.

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Tags: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington Post