According to a recent article by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS): “Vegetated wetlands, like marshes and swamps, are disappearing so quickly that 670,000 acres were lost between 2009 and 2019, an area approximately equal to the land area of Rhode Island. While this data is sobering, it reiterates the importance of wetland conservation.’ >More
It also highlights the ongoing failure of the goal of ‘no net loss’ for our Nation’s wetlands.
Some of this failure is a result of various activities permitted for so-called ‘unavoidable impacts’ to wetlands. When projects like roads, bridges, commercial centers and others are given go-ahead by USACE without quality, timely environmental offset (wetland mitigation) there is an immediate loss of our resources.
The increasingly high-profile failures of offset programs across the U.S. are clearly responsible for not only significant wetland losses each year, but in many cases come with an unexpected price tag for tax-payers. >More
Programmatic failures like these underline the importance of the work our many members at the National Environmental Banking Association do conserving and restoring wetlands across the United States, preserving and protecting these increasingly vital resources in perpetuity.
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