Wetlands: are they important?

There is a good article in Nashville City Paper today concerning wetlands. I guess very few people get up in the morning and think "What can I do today to protect a wetland?" Few do. What do 'wetlands' do and why should we protect them and what do they have to do with the price of eggs (well, they don't have much to do with the price of eggs but they sometimes are associated with the price of development and/or the roads we build). A wetland is not just a swampy area that has sketters and we should avoid. It can be a complex ecosystem that supplies habitat for plants and animals you don't find anyplace else. We usually describe wetlands as what function they supply to the watershed: such as flood control(if the wetlands had not been destroyed outside of New Orleans, Katrina would not have been half as bad); ground water recharge; as I said before, they supply habitat for sensitive animals and their functions go on. But they are located and function best where mother nature has put them. If a road or development comes in and needs that space to develop on, then what do we do? If the state considers them to be large enough (and The Army Corps of Engineer also has input here) then a 'developer' would be required to mitigate for the destruction of them. To replace near by "on-site mitigation" is the best choice because wetlands function best in the watershed where they are located. There are wetland bank credits that can be purchased for mitigation, but they are pretty expensive. Read the article in the paper....
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