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Do you know what wetlands are? Do you know how many wetland ecosystems have been destroyed in the past 50 years?

The definition of wetlands by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) calls wetlands - "lands where saturation with water is the dominant factor determining the nature of soil development and the types of plant and animal communities living in the soil and on its surface (Cowardin, December 1979). Wetlands vary widely because of regional and local differences in soils, topography, climate, hydrology, water chemistry, vegetation, and other factors, including human disturbance. Indeed, wetlands are found from the tundra to the tropics and on every continent except Antarctica."

(EPA)

Basically you may understand wetlands simply as land where the soil has reached its water saturation point and is covered, like a swamp or bog, but it can also be covered with water seasonally not all the time as many marshlands exhibit. Wetlands are found in every ecosystem and biome except the arctic. They are essential to the well being of Planet Earth for several reasons:

1.) provides a wildlife habitat for varies species of fish, birds, insects, reptiles and mammals
2.) provides a habitat for a wide variety of plants
3.) the "biogeochemical" functions of wetlands are extremely important, nutrient recycling
4.) dentrification occurs in wetlands, which reduces nitrogen nitrates that have accumulated due to human interference with fertilizers and other toxic dumping (the wetlands are the fastest and most efficient natural recycling system in the world)
5.) they protect other biomes and habitats around them from storms, flooding, high wind surges and tidal wave surges
6.) they act as water storage refuges for long term and short term needs

The Audubon Society Wetlands Campaign states that "twenty-two states have lost at least 50 percent of their original wetlands..and seven states have lost over 80 percent". Starting in the 1950's America lost about 500,000 acres of wetlands a year, until the Clean Water Act of 1977 and vigorous intervention by environmental organizations began to take affect in protecting these areas. We can not afford to loose our wetlands and in the name of progress, corporate expansion, industrialization, urbanization and greed they have been severely ravaged across America.

There are many ways we have destroyed these precious ecosystems with agriculture being at the forefront as people pushed into wilderness region to live and farm. Then corporate industrialization

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