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American Wetlands Month Nearing Its End

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EPA promoted awareness and urged action

May 2016 marked the 26th annual American Wetlands Month in the U.S. — an initiative that aims to highlight the importance of wetlands to the ecological health of the U.S. as a whole.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) created American Wetlands Month in 1991 to connect different sectors — state, federal, local, private, non-profit — in an effort to push forward awareness of U.S. wetlands and their importance to the overall water health of the nation.

Typically, American Wetlands Month is a broad initiative that involves a number of both national and regional conferences that have key participation from both wetland scientists and educators. According to the EPA, the goal of American Wetlands Month is to “inspire people to work throughout the year to protect, preserve, and expand wetlands.”

Learn! Explore! Take Action!

The EPA refers to wetlands as the “kidneys” of the natural landscape due to their ability to “remove excess nutrients, toxic substances and sediment from water” that makes its way through then. With this concept in mind, it’s easy to immediately see how the preservation of wetlands can work to sustain downstream water quality and overall community water health, or, how proper wetland care and maintenance has eventually result in improved downstream water quality and enhanced overall community water health.

Throughout May, the EPA has promoted a three-pronged approach to help people across the nation get involved with protecting local wetlands — learn, explore and take action. The [link url=”http://www.fws.gov/refuges/” title=”U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service“] makes it easy for U.S. residents to find wetlands near their respective communities.

Wetlands in the U.S.

As of 2011, the EPA reported that [link url=”https://www.epa.gov/national-aquatic-resource-surveys/national-wetland-condition-assessment-2011-results” title=”just under half (48 percent) of U.S. wetland area was in good condition,”] while 32 percent was in poor condition and the remaining 20 percent was in fair condition.

A particular issue from the 2011 report was nonnative plants. According to the EPA, 46 percent of wetland area in the interior plains and 72 percent in the West had “high or very high levels of stress” solely from the presence of nonnative plants.

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