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Wetlands

© Danita LaSage

There was a time when the only use we had for swamps was to drain them and increase our share of drier land. They aren’t swamps anymore – now they’re wetlands, and they’re some of the most valuable property we could have. Valuable for society, that is. Wetlands, like many other habitats, are of little use to the individual who is deprived of his or her right to drain them and sell the real estate to a developer. Their use, their value, is to the greater good of the many rather than the specific use of the few.

Wetlands may be swamps (flowing water, trees), marshes (flowing water, no trees), bogs (accumulates peat, fed by rainwater only) or fens (accumulates peat fed by groundwater), prairie potholes, or vernal pools (shallow, temporary ponds); they have in common that they are inundated by water for at least part of the year, or are characterized by saturated soil for part of the years. They are transitional communities, typified by certain water-loving vegetation types, and by hydric soils, and by their unique hydrology.

You are probably well aware that wetlands are important, that they need to be protected, and that there is still a great deal of controversy over who has to protect them, and to what lengths. You probably know that wetlands are important for many animal species. In particular, swamps and marshes tend to be shallow water bodies, and the penetrating sunlight produces a rich variety of plant life. These areas are major breeding, nesting, and migration stopovers for many species of birds. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has estimated that, although wetlands occupy less than 5% of land in the US, one-third of all endangered species spend at least part of their lives there (Cunningham and Saigo, 1999).

But there are other, less obvious, reasons that wetlands matter. For example, coastal wetlands (like salt marshes) help protect inland areas from erosion. Inland, freshwater wetlands help to recharge the groundwater supplies, and also help to temporarily store river water and release it slowly, preventing floods. Wetland plants are so efficient at removing contaminants from water that some homeowners are constructing their own wetlands to increase the efficiency of their septic systems. Wetlands trap sediment from rivers, so that it is deposited on land rather than the ocean.

So there are several reasons that it’s a shame we have lost so much of our valuable wetlands. Overall, about half of US wetlands have been destroyed, but that’s not the whole story - most of the drained wetlands were inland, freshwater wetlands. More than 90% of the original freshwater wetlands have disappeared in the last 250 years.

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