Wetland Restoration and Mitigation

1. Wetland Restoration and Mitigation • By Josie Lami and Cate Ankersen

2. Wetlands • Wetlands are locations for aquatic biodiversity. • They provide vital ecological and economic services.

3. Disappearing Wetlands • The U.S. has lost more than half of its wetlands since 1900. • Italy95% lost • New Zealand92% lost

4. How are they disappearing? • People drain, fill in, or cover over wetlands to create rice fields or other cropland. • Wetlands have been destroyed in order to extract minerals, oil, and natural gas. • Eliminate breeding grounds for insects that spread diseases; rise of sea levels flood • wetlands • All of these things degrade aquatic • diversity supported by wetlands.

5. Preserving and Restoring Wetlands • Laws are being passed to protect them. • - U.S. zoning laws are made to steer development away from wetlands

6. What’s the U.S. doing? • They require federal permits to fill in wetlands that are more than 1.2 hectares. • Positive: U.S. Fish and Wild Life Services says that this law helped cut the average annual wetland loss by 80% since 1969. • Negative: still attempts by land developers to weaken wetland protection (only 6% of inland wetlands are federally protected) • State and local wetland protection is inconsistent and usually weak.

7. Mitigation • Mitigation banking allows the destruction of existing wetlands as long as an equal area of wetland is created or restored. • Negative: 2001 study by National Academy of Sciences found half of the attempts to create new wetlands fail to replace lost ones • This has become a profitable business • Private investment bankers make money by buying wetlands and restoring them. • Must replace each hectare or destroyed wetland with 2 or more hectares of restored wetland.

8. Case Study: Everglades • Located in South Florida (previously 60-mile-wide) • Knee-deep sheet of water flowing south from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Baytrickled south creating a vast network of wetlands • 1947: est. Everglades National Park containing 1/5 of the remaining Everglades • Unfortunately this did not work • Turned into grazing land by farmers; drained, diverted, paved over, polluted, and invaded by a number of plant and animal species

9. Everglades continued • 90% of wading birds have disappeared from the park and other vertebrates are down 75-95%

10. Everglades continued • Another result is the degradation of Florida Bay, a shallow estuary with many tiny islands, or keys, south of ENP. • Freshwater has been diverted for crops and cities causing the bay to become saltier and warmernutrient input increased which causes algal blooms • This has threatened coral reefs, diving, fishing, and tourism industries.

11. 1990 CERP • Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan • Goals include: • Restore curving flow of more than half the Kissimmee River • Remove 250 mi of canals and levees blocking water flow south of Lake Okeechobee • Buy 93 square mi of farmlandflood itcreate artificial marshes that will filter runoff • Create 18 large reservoirs and underground water storage • Build new canals, reservoirs, pumping systems to capture 80% of water flowing out to sea and return to Everglades • It did unravel: sugarcane growers increased phosphorus dischargeoverruns and hurt funding for the project