There are ecological, as well as economic, benefits to preserving our wetlands. There are some policy strategies that could be implemented to help protect our wetlands from further development. One particular example, to which we need to pay attention, is the role that depleted wetlands played in the catastrophic damage that occurred on the Gulf Coast in 2005 because of Hurricane Katrina.
Wetlands are areas that promote a special type of ecosystem that is not found in any other type of environment, including plants and animals that are native to both land and water ecosystems. Not only that, but wetlands serve as a place for excess water during rainstorms to drain, helping to alleviate some of the problems caused by too much water – if there are wetlands to which water can drain from nearby urbanized areas, some flooding problems can be avoided; if there are wetlands to which water can drain from nearby farmland, it helps to protect crops from flood damage and improves agricultural yield.
In other words, they can be used for water storage, water filtration, and to protect us from floods (“How Wetlands Work”). Another way to say it is that wetlands serve not only as a place where plant and animal species flourish, in an environment found in no other ecosystem, but can, and do, serve as natural drainage basins for excess rainstorm water, helping to protect nearby urban areas and farmland from flooding, as well as providing storage of usable water to fulfill that nearby farmland’s irrigation needs, or a nearby urban area’s needs, if its infrastructure is intelligently designed in a way to utilize it.
It has been said that if the city of New Orleans, including its surrounding metropolitan area, would have strategically left natural wetlands in place to serve as drainage basins and water storage during times of heavy rains, that the city of New Orleans would not have suffered such heavy damage during the rampage of Hurricane Katrina (read this article). One of the reasons why it is said that wetlands offer a buffer to flooding is due to the fact that water that gathers in wetland areas slows down to a much slower velocity than it would otherwise have, allowing wetlands to be able to store, in some instances, up to 60 days of floodwaters – that would have done a lot to help protect New Orleans.
The Everglades Foundation seeks to restore and protect the natural wetlands found in the Everglades, as well as the Big Cypress Swamp, found in the southern part of Florida, south of Lake Okeechobee. The purpose of this effort is to provide a habitat for the abundant wildlife found in this part of southern Florida, as well as to provide a reliable source of water for the inhabitants of the Miami-Dade area – in this sense, a wetlands area is useful to mankind, not just to be used as a drainage basin for excess water, but for the abundance of usable water found in that habitat.
What are some of the land and water wildlife that thrive in a wetland environment? The land-based wildlife include white-tailed deer, beavers, muskrats, raccoons, bobcats, a swamp-based rabbit, as well as birds such as bald eagles, herons, hawks, and ospreys. This also includes birds that are home in the water, such as ducks, geese, and woodpeckers. The fish that thrive in a wetland environment include types of bass, trout, and flounder, but include other types of sea life as well, including crabs, oysters, clams, and shrimp (“How Wetlands Work”).
As for the preservation of our remaining wetland, the question is asked what policy strategies have been implemented, or could be implemented in the future, to help preserve those remaining wetlands. The Clean Water Act, in 1972, did a lot to help greatly slow down the draining and development of our remaining wetlands by requiring that we don’t allow pollutants to contaminate our waters, including the waters of the wetlands. Another policy advantage that has slowed down development of wetlands is the requirement of permits and obedience to regulation, in coherence to a confusing array of federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States Army Corp of Engineers, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
There are also programs in place that offer (a) wetland restoration, or the returning of land previously drained for other purposes back to the purpose of being a wetland, (b) wetland creation, or developing a wetland where one didn’t previously exist, and (c) wetland enhancement, such as decreasing or increasing the amount of water in an existing wetland.
Another idea that you’ll see is the renaming of wetlands to make them more acceptable and marketable to the general public; instead of calling it a wetland or a marsh, it is instead referred to as a water garden – this is the approach they’ve used in the Charlotte, North Carolina area to get public support for creating a wetlands area to help alleviate condition of flooding that occur during their seasons of heavy rainfall.
Perhaps another strategy that could be utilized in the future is to try to find food sources that could be grown in wetlands, allowing those wetlands to remain in their natural state while still providing an economic benefit and part of our food supply – we already do that in some wetlands, such as the bayous in southern Louisiana.
Cattails, which you find in wetlands, can also be easily turned into a biofuel, which can allow these areas to naturally clean and purify water supplies while simultaneously benefitting our economy and reducing our dependency on foreign oil (read more here).
Wetlands do provide some benefits for us, helping to provide drainage during heavy rains, storage of water over periods of time, as well as providing usable water, and part of our food supply. Having wetlands in place would have also done much to spare New Orleans and its surrounding coastline some of its trouble. Much has been done, and is being done, to help preserve remaining wetlands, restore previous wetlands, or create new wetlands for the reasons mentioned above.
