Wetlands are being drained for agriculture and development. Work is underway to restore the balance. Read and watch WhatCanBeSaved:
https://apnews.com/58c6aa66f52541d3ad81997c720fd5d4
There are some who are trying to reclaim these lost waterbodies. In the wetlands of eastern England, a motley team of farmers, university researchers and conservationists is digging into the region’s barley and wheat fields to turn back the clock. They seek out patches of muddy earth that hint at lost ponds lurking beneath.
Every type of naturally occurring wetland has suffered — from ponds, freshwater swamps and coastal marshes, to fens, bogs and other peatlands.—Roughly 5,000 wetland-dependent species threatened with extinction, including mammals, birds and amphibians, according to Ramsar. Wetlands in northern China, the central U.S., northern Africa, India and the Middle East already have been depleted by the pumping of underground aquifers for agriculture.
Each spring and fall bring an even greater influx of waterfowl: clouds of migrating snow geese that descend en masse, lingering for a few days on the larger water bodies as they pass between breeding grounds in Canada and their winter refuges to the south. Schott gestured at fields dotted with “nuisance wetlands” as he navigated his truck down a bumpy dirt road.Despite their mind-boggling numbers — several million potholes are spread across a region that covers portions of five states and three Canadian provinces— these wetlands are steadily blinking out. One by one, they’re being drained or plowed under.
The region’s future, experts say, comes down to a numbers game, one that so far is tilting against the potholes as wetlands are sacrificed to feed demand for the corn-based fuel ethanol. Schott, other farmers and their political allies in Congress want wetlands less than an acre in size — such as the three that he recently drained — to be exempted from the offset requirement. For now, if he doesn’t build the pond, he stands to lose his federally subsidized farm insurance and be ineligible for other government assistance.
A significant portion of the increase came from the construction of dams that turned areas with many small wetlands into large reservoirs, the researchers found. The combined area covered by natural marshes decreased by almost 3,000 square miles during the same period.
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