from the National Mitigation Banking Association (NMBA) blog“There are many places where the ground is literally covered, and the whole heavens completely blackened, with innumerable flocks of countless numbers of geese, ducks, brants, cranes, and all the various noisy tribes, of all the feathered creation.” – Lansford W. Hastings in The 1845 Pioneers Guide for the Western Traveler
Since colonial times Americans have worked fervently to drain and fill the estimated 225 million acres of wetlands that graced what eventually became the contiguous United States. The Swamp Land Acts of 1849, 1850, and 1860 formally declared wetlands a menace and hindrance to land development, and encouraged their drainage and development. America agreed, and worked to dry up more than half of the sponge that absorbs and stores floodwaters; to scoop out the great marshy gills that filter pollutants from runoff; and to dredge the productive nurseries that maintain aquatic and avian life.
America’s wetlands, that support one-third of our threatened and endangered species, continued to suffer from railroads that made agriculture more profitable, a growing taste for beaver pelts and sugar, and muddled laws that regarded land as private and water as public. The Industrial Revolution as well as growth and development of our U.S. Government led military presence have also clearly extracted their toll. It wasn’t until the last few decades that the irreplaceable value of wetlands and importance of water quality has become clearer. And while we have a better understanding today of how wetlands benefit our environment, calculating the ecological services wetlands perform is still an evolving science.
