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By
John Heilprin
Associated Press
March 31, 2006
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 hunting,
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.
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