Increase in Wetlands Acreage - The Sky is Still Falling

This story on wetlands broadcast on NPR last week reminds me why I don't take much stock in the Global Warming hoopla.  It probably is a real phenomena, but I don't believe in much of anything the environmentalists have say about it.  They've been forecasting nothing but environmental disasters since the early 1970's.  In their eyes, the sky is always falling.

Last week's press release from the US Department of the Interior:   

"Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton today released a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report that shows a net gain in America’s nonagricultural and agricultural wetlands for the first time since the Service began compiling data in 1954....... approximately 191,800 acres of wetlands were gained between 1998 and 2004, bringing the nation’s total wetlands acreage to 107.7 million acres, or 5 percent of the land area of the lower 48 states." 

Can the environmentalists be pleased about this, the very first time wetlands acreage has increased since that was measured over a half a century ago?  No, of course not!  That's because the environmentalists are unhappy that there was still a loss of the swampy, marshy wetlands (good wetlands), and the gain in wetlands acreage was largely due to the construction of stormwater retention ponds (bad wetlands). 

"Patrick Megonigal, a wetlands scientist at the Smithsonian's Environmental Research Center, said there is no question that the nation loses something when it trades a natural wetland for an artificial pond.... "Not all wetlands are created equal," Megonigal said. "There are many different types of wetlands, and we're losing in many cases highly functioning, high-quality wetlands and replacing them with low-quality wetlands."

This is true to a certain extent, and the DOI press release stated as much.  But "low-quality" wetlands are still a lot better than no wetlands.  And the DOI also credits wetlands restoration on conservation land as part of the net gain.  How can it be that neither of the environmentalists quoted in the NPR story said "We're glad that the trend of destruction of wetlands has reversed"? To the tree-huggers, there is never good news, it's all bad, and anything done under the Bush adminstration is doubly bad.  Environmentalists appear to be genetically incapable of acknowledging or being happy about the many significant improvements in environmental quality in the past 25 years.  It's never enough for them.   

Comments

[Sissy Willis]

It's a religion to them, as Michael Crichton has written:

Repent, o ye energy sinners http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2003/12/the_most_import.html

And they're shameless about preaching the gospel to us infidels. From "The Tribal Filter on Green News" in Insight Mag, July 1990:

. . . At a conference on the environment in Washington earlier this year, reported by The Wall Street Journal's David Brooks, Charles Alexander harrumphed:

"As the science editor at Time I would freely admit that on this issue we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy."

Soylent green http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2004/01/_blogging_is_no_4.html

[Muley]

Thanks for the excellent article! I have often wondered about what the real state of our environmental progress is. It seems so politicized most of the time.

I'm going to visit your blog again when I have more time to look through your back catalog. Keep up the good work!

[Scott]

Believe me, the environment is in better condition now then it's been since before the industrial revolution.

This is just more proof.

You're right about it being a religion, to say anything good about the environment in the US is blasphemous.

Love the blog.

[Terri]

Well said Miss Kelly
Simiilar to all of the accolades that President Bush got for the diesal emmissions law that passed a few years back. Yeah - I don't really remember either!

[Katinula]

Actually, wetlands created around stormwater retention ponds don't function in nearly the same way as natural wetlands do. To compare the two is to compare apples and oranges and to make a blanket statement that wetlands are increasing b/c of areas around stormwater retention ponds is just ignorance. Wetlands perform monumental services to ecosystems. some of those services can be performed by those wetlands created around SW retention ponds...things like nursery areas for wildlife and such. However, when you are talking about the functions such as the slow filtering of contaminants out of water and the power of wetlands to absorb so much water to abate flooding in areas prone to this, retention pond wetlands don't perform in nearly the same way. New Orleans is a perfect example. Since the early 1900's, their coastal wetland loss accounts for almost 50% of the total US loss of wetlands. This didnt have an affect on the strength of Katrina, but it certainly had a monumental affect on the ability of the natural landscape to withstand Katrina. SW retention pond wetlands would not have functioned in the same way. Wetlands aren't there just to look at, they perform vital functions that the population takes for granted every day.

[misskelly]

Katinula, no one is saying they're the functional equivalent. Stormwater retention ponds nonetheless prevent TPH and metals in the runoff from directly entering surface water bodies, and they're a big improvement in handling stormwater. They do provide some wildlife habitat, as anybody who works near one can attest. The DOI press release indicates that wetlands restoration in conservation area is also part of the net gain (which I added to the entry above). Yes, we need to protect wetlands, especially coastal ones. (Katrina may utimately prove useful in demonstrating what a bad idea it is to have intense development in these wetlands.) Wetlands restoration has proven to be quite successful, and is being used in many states to offset wetlands losses. There's plenty of good news here.