Can you believe the US loses over 80,000 acres of wetlands every year?

[FayeforCure]

Can you believe the United States loses over 80,000 acres of wetlands every year?  Wetlands are essential to the maintenance of our country's water quality, flood protection, water quantity, and biodiversity. 

Tell President Obama to use every means possible to protect our wetlands from further destruction.

In March, the Sierra Club along with Ducks Unlimited and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership will meet with EPA officials to discuss federal protection for our country's wetlands.  We will present this petition at the meeting to show the Obama administration that as Americans we want our wetlands protected.

Our goal is to deliver 100,000 petition signatures for wetlands protection to the Obama Administration.  Right now we have 75,000 signatures.

Add your name to the petition today and help us reach the 100,000 signature goal.

We're at a critical juncture in this fight because in addition to all the threats to our wetlands mentioned above, climate change is hastening the process. You can help restore this precious natural resource.  Ask President Obama to protect our wetlands from further destruction.

Thanks for all you do to protect our environment!


P.S. We only need 25,000 more signatures to meet our 100,000 signature goal.  Forward this email to friends and family and ask them to take action today!

http://action.sierraclub.org/ProtectOurWetlands

[Captain Zissou]

Yes.

[BridgeTroll]

In March, the Sierra Club along with Ducks Unlimited

You DO realize that Ducks Unlimited (who I support BTW) is mainly supported by Duck Hunters...

Do you support hunters access to these wetlands?

http://www.ducks.org/

[Ocklawaha]

As faye eased through the tall grass, her finger could feel the curve of the trigger, cold steel, a contrast to the warm wood of her gun stock. Her boots sloshing along in a muck with a smell that defies description, a blue gray gumbo, that sticks to, and stains, everything. Here and there she would come to a small clearing, push back the limbs of the low growing bay trees, and peer through to the next channel. Then a sudden explosion of action, fluttering wings, gun barrel swinging skyward, as the rare query squalks upward, "Mica, Mica, Mica" boom!

OCKLAWAHA

[FayeforCure]

In March, the Sierra Club along with Ducks Unlimited

You DO realize that Ducks Unlimited (who I support BTW) is mainly supported by Duck Hunters...

Do you support hunters access to these wetlands?

http://www.ducks.org/

As you know, I'm a proud vegetarian!!

Shooting fake duckies is a fun sport I suppose.

More than 40 percent of the state's traditional wetlands have been drained for agricultural use, Johnson said. Minnesota has lost 97 percent of its wetlands, while 99 percent of Iowa's wetlands have been drained.

"The impact to the millions of wetlands that attract countless ducks to these breeding grounds in spring makes it difficult to imagine how to maintain today's level of waterfowl populations in altered climate conditions," said Glenn Guntenspergen, a U.S. Geological Survey researcher and one of the report authors. "Parents may not have time to raise their young to where they can fly because of wetlands drying up too quickly in the warming climate of the future."

Forced to move
The research indicates that with a rise in temperature, waterfowl would be forced to migrate east - only to find little space to rear their young. The study is peer-reviewed, meaning it has been scrutinized by scientists with expertise in the field.

"Unfortunately, the model simulations show that under forecasted climate-change scenarios for this region, the western prairie potholes will be too dry and the eastern ones will have too few functional wetlands and nesting habitat to support historical levels of waterfowl and other wetland-dependent species," Johnson said.

http://www.argusleader.com/article/20100212/NEWS/2120322/1001/news

[BridgeTroll]

So you support saving wetlands for all except hunters?  Vegetarian or not... the ducks in those wetlands are not fake... they are delicious...

[reednavy]

The most wetlands loss has been occuring in Louisiana for many years now, as a result or settling or salt water intrusion thanks to pipelines.

However, efforts are underway to crrect this issue, and also grow wetlands in the Atchafalaya River delta south of Morgan City.

On a side note, part of this is also due to the Atchafalaya River being damed at it's beginning where the Red, Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers come together. The Atch. is a distributary and the MS River will one day change it's course for good to the Atch. River and New Orleans and Baton Rouge will be on a series of lakes after that.

[Ocklawaha]

Love the Atch Reednavy, the long, long, bridges over pure southern swamp. Though I could do without the mandatory speeding ticket at Krotz Springs.

I read somewhere that the diversion dam that keeps the Mississisloppy out of the Atch, is giving way. Apparently they have found that the river is scouring the channel under the structure and they expect it to fail. If that happens, the whole show shifts to the Atch. and New Orleans and Baton Rouge will become backwater ports.

OCKLAWAHA

[samiam]

Ock
How much time do you think New Orleans has before it is flooded for good.

[Dog Walker]

Sam, the old parts of New Orleans, those developed before the levees were built, did not flood during Katrina and probably never will.  The Old Quarter, Marigney, Garden District are all high enough and if the main channel of the Mississippi ever shifts will probably stay even dryer.

Building behind a levee, below the water level, is sort of like building just downstream of a dam.  It's just a matter of time.

[reednavy]

DW, not true. New Orleans and surrounding areas are built atop silt that has and is continuing to settle. Bedrock is several hundred to thousands of feet below as all that silt from when the MS River would undergo delta switching over thousands of years has been deposited.

New orleans was originally all above sea level, but settling in addition to development has caused the city to sink faster. Even the French Quarter will eventually settle below sea level and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Had humans no built levees and flood controls, and allowed the MS River to produce annual floods and deposit fresh sediment, this probabaly wouldn't be happening.

Baton Rouge is not in the risk of settling, as it sits atop true soils and bluffs with bedrock closer to the surface. Roughly everything south of I-10 is settling and will continue.

We can only keep the Atchafalaya stopped up for so long. If a large enough flood, like 1973's occurs again, the dam may fail and then the MS River will forever shift.

[buckethead]

Lose a wetland, gain a retention pond.

[Ocklawaha]

Actually, when the city was founded, it was as nicely above sea level as any other coastal - river delta region. The Mississippi is never clear, always muddy, swirling and eating it's way from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea.
As it approaches the Gulf of Mexico, all of that dirt it has carried with it (no small amount coming from the Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas and Red Rivers) starts to settle to the bottom meaning the bottom gets shallower as it reaches to the sea. Just as holding a garden hose at a sand pile, as the water runs down you'll have a channel then it fans out into a shallow alluvial plain. That plain is 100% river silt, as Reed Navy said, and I'm certain the early pioneers would have gone no where near there with a building, had they a clue. The distributary stage or delta is actually always rising, but it rises from the bottom of it's rivers as they fill in, until the volume of water can no long be contained by the channel, then they shift to a new "lowest" area. Even if the silt the city sits on didn't sink an inch, the constant building of the river bottom spells it's doom. A delta void of it's feeders, will eventually return to the sea, and the breakers slowly remove the millions of years of silt deposited.


OCKLAWAHA

[Dog Walker]

Hadn't thought about the settling, only the flooding that has occurred previously.  Are we talking tens, hundreds or thousands of years?

How did they build those skyscrapers in the Financial district?  Are they floated on those big concrete caissons in the silt?

[reednavy]

I think they used something called a floating foundation, but don't quote me on that.