Bush Wetlands Total Includes Areas Without Water - "Dysfunctional" Wetland

[hatrack]

EDIT

"But he returned immediately to Washington, and plans to be in Florida on Friday for another event linked to the conservation of the Everglades. He told the small crowd on Thursday that the United States had "responsibilities to the natural world to conserve that which we have and make it even better."

White House officials pointed to Mr. Bush's budget proposal for roughly $30 million in new funds for the protection of wetlands and expansion of acreage. But before Mr. Bush had departed Maine, the Kerry campaign was already turning out comparisons of Mr. Bush's environmental record with Mr. Kerry's voting record in the Senate, and arguing that Mr. Bush was undergoing an election-year conversion to appear proactive on environmental issues.

EDIT

Perhaps the most important element of Mr. Bush's announcement on Thursday was his call for the government to finish a complete inventory of the nation's wetlands. Like much surrounding his environmental record — one of the most contentious areas of his presidency — there is little agreement on the facts, much less the wisdom of his policies.

Estimates of the nation's inventory of wetlands are made regularly by both the Agriculture Department, which surveys only private land, and the Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service, whose surveys take in the entire continental United States. The administration quoted a new Agriculture Department survey, which reported a slight net increase in wetlands on agricultural land, though it uses a slightly different and looser definition of the term wetland. It includes what the department called "dysfunctional," or largely drained, wetlands, and produced a total figure of 110 million acres of privately held wetlands.

The Fish and Wildlife Service said that the agency's most recent survey, which covered the years 1986-1997, showed 105.5 million acres of wetlands, though it covers public land as well."

EDIT



OK, so now wetlands without water are "dysfunctional" wetlands, but good enough to include in the total. Would that make a clear-cut a "vertically impaired forest-resource area"? Perhaps a coal waste fill will now be a "riprarian vertical-enhancement zone"?

[blindpig]

1. on the other hand

Coastal SC has a lot of these dysfunctional wetlands, aka pine plantations. This land was formerly longleaf pine savanna until ditched. The ditches still provide a resevoir for the more aquatic species and expand in times of high rain. One can hope that at some more enlightened time some of these ditches might be judicially filled and returned to their seasonal condition. In any case being designated wetlands will keep them out of the hands of the damned developers, theoretically.