WHY AND HOW ARE WETLANDS BEING THREATENED?

Question

GEOGRAPHY

Answer 1

Wetlands are a very crucial part of the environment.  in the early days of American history, settlers found that wetlands to be a nuisance and dangerous place full of snake, mosquitoes, and down south alligators.  Wetlands were drained into surrounding waterways and converted into develop-able land.  Up until the 1970.  Here is a website that has a map to show wetland loss by state plus alot of information on other threats to wetlands.  http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/pdf/thr...

Most of the destruction took place in the big urban/suburban sprawl of the 1950s until the environmental movement in the 1970s, but by then the damage is done.  

These areas are prone to flooding, poor drainage (look at New Orleans!!!! built entirely on wetlands).  Natural wetlands were 80% destroyed on the Mississippi River.  You should know that these areas have some of the most devistating floods in the US.  Wetlands would have helped ebb the height of the flood by acting as a sponge along the river.

Answer 2

Wetlands are being threatened from a variety of areas.  I am an environmental scientist and i specialize in wetland permitting and regulation on the land use end.

The main threats to wetlands is through pollution and degradation.  Wetlands have become very useful stormwater drainage areas for local communities and towns.  It is very easy and beneficial to run the sewer systems into a wetland so all the water drains off the roads into a natural environment.  

This is fine for wetlands as well except for one major problem: pollution.  Unfortunately when it rains and the water drains into a wetland, water isnt the only thing being drained.  With it comes large debris like litter as well as oil, pesticides, soaps, dirt and sediment and the worst culprit of all...salt.  All of these things can damage or degrade the ecosystem.  Salt is the most dangerous of all because it can change the wetland as a whole, very quickly.  This could have impacts farther reaching than the wetland area as well especially if it is a tidal wetland area draining into a bay or other large body of water.

Other threats to wetlands are changing sea levels and temperature fluxes due to global climate change.  On top of that, there is the over development around wetlands which will add more pollution as well as possibly take away the footprint of the wetlands.  People tend to forget that wetlands have a tendency to flood so a lot of damage can be done if people begin to build too close.

Wetlands are very important to us because they hold a lot of water which would otherwise need to go somewhere else.  Also during storm times they are a great insulator or buffer against flooding and other storm impacts.  Without wetlands our way of life would be very different, especially along the worlds coastlines.  We should try and preserve them as they are an interesting and unique habitat that has a lot of use for lots of organisms....including humans

Answer 3

Like it is not such much a threat as a lacks of security.

Dem ducks is refusin to pay duh protection money.

Duh yeah, den dere's also what njdevil said.  Like we make our soivices worthwile for de ducks.