Celebrate Coastal Wetlands...

Connecting Us All!

What Are Coastal Wetlands?

Coastal wetlands include all tidal and non-tidal, fresh,
saline, and brackish water wetlands in coastal watersheds.
They include, but are not limited to, salt marshes,
bottomland hardwood swamps, fresh marshes, seagrass
beds, mangrove swamps, and shrubby depressions known
in the southeast United States as "pocosins."

About 40 percent of the wetlands in the lower 48
states are coastal wetlands (approximately 40 million
acres), and approximately 81 percent of coastal wetlands
in the continental United States are in the southeast.

Why Are Coastal Wetlands Important?

•	Coastal wetlands provide spawning grounds,
nurseries, shelter, and food for finfish, shellfish,
birds, and other wildlife. This includes:

•	More than half of commercially harvested fish
in the United States. The abundance and health
of these fish is directly related to wetland quality
and quantity.

•	85 percent of waterfowl and other migratory
birds.

•	Nearly 45 percent of the nation's endangered
and threatened species.

•	Wetlands help improve surface water quality by
filtering and retaining residential, agricultural, and
urban wastes.

•	They also buffer coastal areas against storm and
wave damage and help stabilize shorelines.

Tidal marshes and other coastal wedands buffer coastal areas against storm
and wave damage and help stabilize shorelines. These functions have
become more important due to climate change.

Why Are Coastal Wetlands Disappearing?

More than half the U.S. population lives in coastal
counties at densities about five times greater than those
of non-coastal counties. Coastal populations are expected
to continue growing in the coming decades, which will
continue to place enormous direct and indirect pressure
on existing coastal wetlands.

Coastal wetlands are being directly impacted as
a result of dredged or fill activities associated with
roads, residential and commercial development, marina
construction, and other related infrastructure projects.

In addition to direct losses of coastal wetlands,
indirect impacts from stormwater, pollutant runoff
from agriculture, residential, commercial and industrial
development, erosion, changes in water flows, and invasive
species result in the degradation of coastal wetland quality
and function.

Climate change and sea level will exacerbate these
existing stressors on coastal wetlands. For example, in the
US-, sea level is rising at a rate of between a few inches
to a foot or more per century. Coastal wetlands can and
do move inland with rising sea level, but in developed
areas roads, houses, parking lots, and other infrastructure
impede with this natural migration of coastal wetlands.
The inability of the wetlands to migrate inland will
eventually result in the wetlands becoming submerged and
lost with rising sea level.

Many animals, including the blue crab, rely on coastal wetlands for
food and shelter. Protection of wetlands is important to crab and
other commerical fisheries along the coast.

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How Do Coastal Wetlands Connect Us?

If you love seafood - many kinds of fish from salmon to striped bass, as well as lobster, shrimp, oysters and crabs,
depend on coastal wetlands for places to live, feed, or reproduce.

If you live near a river hundreds of milesfrom the coast - water flowing in that river most likely ends in a coastal wetland.
Sometimes rivers contain pollutants, such as excess fertilizer or pesticides, which can be filtered by coastal wetlands
before they reach the ocean. Unfortunately, large amounts of pollutants can overwhelm coastal wetlands, which can
create problems for fish along the coast.

If you drive a car, cook, or heatyour home - you might be using oil or gas that traveled through coastal wetlands. Eighteen
percent of IXS. oil production and almost 24 percent of LIS- natural gas production originates in, is transported
through, or is processed in Louisiana coastal wetlands.

10 Things You Can Do
for Coastal Wetlands

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Participate in programs that help protect and restore
wetlands. Contact local, state, or federal agencies,
community groups, environmental organizations, and
other non-government organizations. To participate
in activities for American Wetlands Month in May,
visit http:/Aywwepa.gov/wetlands/awm.

Report illegal actions such as unauthorized fill or
dredging activities to government authorities, such as
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers.

Pick up litter and dispose in appropriate trash
containers. Keep surface areas that wash into
storm drains clean from pet waste, toxic chemicals,
fertilizers, and motor oil, which eventually reach and
impair our wetlands.

Use native species when planting trees, shrubs, and
flowers to preserve the ecological balance of local
wetlands.

Use "living shoreline" techniques that make use of
plant roots to stabilize soil if you own waterfront
property and your shoreline or river bank needs to be
stabilized.

Avoid wetlands if you are expanding your house or
installing a shed.

Use phosphate-free laundry and dishwasher
detergents. Phosphates encourage algae growth,
which can suffocate aquatic life.

Use paper and recycled products made from
unbleached paper. Bleached paper contains toxic
chemicals that can contaminate water.

Use non-toxic products for household cleaning and
lawn and garden care. Never spray lawn and garden
chemicals, outside on a windy day or on a day that it
might rain and wash the chemicals into waterways.
Reduce, reuse, and recycle household items and waste.

Tupelo swamps provide habitat to countless species of plants and
animals, store flood waters, and improve water quality, but are
disappearing in Louisiana and other coastal states.

Coastal Wetland Loss

By the mid 1970s, more than half of all salt marshes
and mangrove forests present in pre-colonial times
had been destroyed.

The Chesapeake Bay has lost 90 percent of its
submerged aquatic vegetation and 50 percent of its
coastal marshes.

Losses of coastal marshes have been most extensive
in Florida, Texas, California and Louisiana.
• For example: from 1990-2000 Louisiana lost
approximately 24 square miles of coastal
wetlands per year. More than 91 percent of
California's coastal wetlands have been lost.
Between 1998 and 2004 coastal watersheds of the
Atlantic Ocean, Great Lakes, and Gulf of Mexico
lost 354,000 acres, or about 59,000 acres per year.

For more information, visit:

http: / / www.epa.gov/ owow/ wetlands
http:/ / www.nmfs.noaa.gov/habitat/habitatprotection/ wetlands/index, htm

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