Restoring Nations' Wetlands

6 Pages 1440 Words

To fully understand why our nations’ wetlands should be restored, we first need to have a complete and clear understanding of what a wetland is. According to Rodney Williamson in the Iowa View newspaper article “Struggling over the value of wetlands” a wetland is defined as, “an ecosystem that depends on constant or recurrent, shallow inundation or saturation at or near the surface of the substrate.” Williamson continues on to set minimum characteristics that a wetland must contain, which follow as:
• Recurrent, sustained inundation or saturation at or near the surface.
• Presence of physical, chemical and biological reflective of the above.
• Hydric soils and hydrophytic vegetation.
Human societies have long been interacting with wetlands. Even undrained wetlands have made a substantial contribution to rural economies and several societies have lived in intimate association with them. Some wetlands have even formed through various forms of human activity. However, for the last couple of centuries, the focus of human interest in wetlands has been to drain them. It is not difficult to understand the humans’ desire to drain wetlands. After all, they can be uncomfortable places to work or live; they can be a source of disease, and they may offer greater remuneration when they are drained (Restoration of Temperate Wetlands . . . 1).
Yet, people fail to realize that wetlands are not wastelands and that there are many things wetlands do to benefit the environment. Some of these include filtering sediments, nutrients and pesticides from polluted runoffs; alleviate flood peaks and reduces the impact of flooding, help regulate water levels, along with playing an important role in
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recharging groundwater. There are also different types of wetlands, which range from “permanents” which are there year round to temporary and seasonal wetlands. Robinson mentions in her article “Fighting misinformation about...