WETLANDS IN RAPID DECLINE

About 370,000 acres of coastal wetlands were lost along the Gulf of Mexico between 1998 and 2004, according to a new study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Atlantic Coast lost just 15,000 acres during the same time period, though the two regions both have about 15 million acres of coastal wetlands.

The study's authors concluded that development in the Gulf region "was the overwhelming factor" in the loss.

Wetlands in Mississippi and Alabama appear to be especially at risk, due to rapid development near the coastlines of both states.

The study included coastal salt marshes, as well as freshwater wetlands near enough to the ocean to be affected by tides.

Under that definition, the entire Mobile-Tensaw Delta was included in the study, as were the wetlands along the rivers feeding into the Delta, some of which are as much as 60 miles inland.

Most of the loss has occurred in the freshwater wetlands — including swamps, pitcher plant bogs and pine savannas — rather than in the salt marshes fringing the shores of bays and coastal rivers, according to the report.

"We had been seeing the prodigious loss of wetlands and wanted to document it," said Susan-Marie Steadman, an NOAA fishery biologist and one of the study's authors. "I was not surprised that we were losing wetlands along the Gulf. I was surprised we were losing 60,000 acres per year."

Steadman said it was well documented that Louisiana was losing about 20,000 acres of coastal wetlands per year, but no one expected the rest of the Gulf Coast to be losing an additional 40,000 acres annually.

The amount lost along the Gulf Coast during the six-year study period was roughly equivalent to all wetlands lost in the United States during the 1990s, according to the study. Steadman said there was not enough data available to pinpoint losses on a state-by-state basis.

It was also unclear why the losses along the Gulf Coast were 25 times greater than along the Atlantic Coast during the study period. The increasing pace of development around the Gulf is partly to blame, but it appears likely that a more important difference may be the way environmental laws are enforced in the two regions.

"The Gulf losses are huge. I know there is now an interest within the federal agencies in looking at the Gulf more closely," Steadman said. "What we're seeing in this report is the loss of wetlands to development, not so much of them being lost to open water or washed away (as in Louisiana)."

She said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, NOAA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are teaming up to investigate the problem. Significant funding was included in the newly passed economic stimulus package dedicated to rebuilding, restoring and protecting the Gulf's wetlands.

Grant Larsen, a staff officer with Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, said the connection between new residential development in Mississippi and damage to nearby wetlands was "undeniable."

"With the large and growing percentage of people that live within these coastal areas, it's not just Florida that is seeing this," Larsen said. "The losses are incremental. It's often a percentage of an acre that is lost for an individual home. That adds up."

Steadman said one of the first studies federal officials plan to do would try to link wetland destruction permits issued by the Corps of Engineers with lost wetlands.

"If we can't associate the losses with a permit, we need to try to think about addressing unpermitted wetland loss," Steadman said.

In recent years, Press-Register reporters have discovered large-scale wetland destruction around south Alabama by the Alabama Department of Transportation, the city of Daphne and numerous private developers.