Interior, USDA Include Golf Course Ponds To "Prove" Wetland Growth - NYT [View All]

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WASHINGTON, March 30 — In the bog of the federal regulatory code, a wetland is defined as a marshy area of saturated soils and plants whose roots spend part of their lives immersed in water. In the Interior Department's periodic national surveys, a wetland is defined, more or less, as wet. Traditional tidal, coastal and upland marshes count, but so do golf course water hazards and other man-made ponds whose surface is less than 20 acres.

And so, even at a time of continued marsh depletion, pond inflation permitted Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns to announce proudly on Thursday the first net increase in wetlands since the Fish and Wildlife Service started measuring them in 1954. Wetlands acreage, measured largely by aerial surveys, totaled 107.7 million acres at the end of 2004, up by 191,800 acres from 1998.

The two cabinet secretaries hailed the apparent reversal in the long trend of wetland losses. "I'm pleased to complete my term as secretary of interior by announcing some good news, said Ms. Norton, who will step down from her job Friday. A net total of 523,500 acres of swamps and tidal marshes had been lost, but the Fish and Wildlife Service measured gains of 715,300 acres of shallow-water wetlands, or ponds. According to the report's author, Tom Dahl, those can be 20 to 30 feet deep. Almost two years ago, President Bush, under attack by environmental groups for loosening controls on development in wetlands, announced that one of his goals was to increase net wetland acreage.


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At Thursday's news conference, federal officials said that the report measures the quantity — not the quality — of wetlands. Julie Sibbing, the leading wetlands expert at the National Wildlife Federation, called the mining-site ponds "wet deserts." "The most stunning thing about this report," she said, "is that we're losing diverse natural wetlands in this country and the administration tells us it's O.K. because we've increased the number of ponds."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/washington/31wetlands.html