Nobody would color the Bush Administration green. However, it claims it has not only reversed decades of wetlands loss but increased wetlands acreage by nearly a couple hundred thousand acres to more than a hundred million in six years.
How did it do that? By changing the definition of wetlands and including lots more land that's - well - wet.
Talk about fuzzy math. Before Gale Norton stepped down as interior secretary, she proudly announced with Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns the first increase in wetlands since 1954 when the Fish and Wildlife Service started measuring its acreage. From 1998 to 2004, wetlands acreage increased by 191,800 acres to 107.7 million acres, it said in a report.
The increase in acreage depends on how you define wetlands, obviously. According to the federal regulatory code, marshy areas with saturated soils and plants with roots that live in water at some point are wetlands. The description at the Interior Department, however, is much more expansive, even including parts of golf courses and man-made ponds, providing the surface is under 20 acres.
A couple of years back when President Bush said he would increase the net wetland acreage, environmentalists wondered how that would happen. Now we know. What the Bush Administration is selling the nation, however, are quantities of land that is wet, not quality wetlands.
That includes mining ponds, which Julie Sibbing, wetlands expert at the National Wildlife Federation, calls "wet deserts." The report did not address the loss of 64,000 acres of coastal wetlands after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.As Ms. Sibbing said, "The most stunning thing about this report is that we're losing diverse national wetlands in this country and the administration tells us it's OK because we've increased the number of ponds."
Now that we're into April showers, we have to wonder if the administration will change the definition once again - this time to include mud puddles.
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