Recently, the Houston Sierra Club met with our friends at Bayou City Waterkeeper and Galveston Bay Foundation to discuss how our organizations can together better protect wetlands in the Houston Area. This article will answer some questions about wetlands and request you volunteer to protect them.
To volunteer, see our Help Wanted page.
Sierra Club Wetlands Policy
The Sierra Club has a national policy on wetlands. It says, “The Sierra Club advocates a consistent public policy to preserve and restore the hydrologic, biologic, and aesthetic values of wetlands as public assets. We place highest priority on the protection of existing natural wetlands. Because our goal is to reverse, not merely slow, the trend of wetlands destruction and degradation, we also support restoration of degraded wetlands. Wetlands protection should be promoted further by increased public understanding and enjoyment of wetland values through compatible uses.”
The Sierra Club wetland policy also supports the removal of public incentives that lead to wetland destruction and supports public incentives which protect wetlands. The Club supports public and private acquisition of wetlands for preservation, management, research, and education and stronger federal, state, and local programs to implement these elements. You can find the entire Sierra Club Wetlands Policy on the Sierra Club website, https://www.sierraclub.org.
What Are Wetlands and How Do They Benefit the Environment and Us?
Wetlands are places where plants grow that can withstand varying amounts of water in saturated soils (sometimes permanently and sometimes on a seasonal, periodic, and temporary basis). They have tremendous benefits for the environment, other living things, and people. Some of those benefits include:
1. Aesthetic (beauty/scenery);
2. Fish and wildlife habitat (food/shelter for endangered/game/non-game/species of concern like Eastern Wild Turkey, Gray Squirrel, White-Tailed Deer, Pileated Woodpecker, etc.);
3. Aquatic and wetlands habitat enhancement and protection (pool/riffle creation, waterfalls, and downed tree food sources called coarse woody debris);
4. Sediment/nutrient pollution filtration;
5. Water conservation/storage and cooling (provides vegetation shading of water);
6. Flood control/attenuation;
7. Ecotone creation (allows edges of different habitats, like upland forests and aquatic areas, to come together/interact);
8. Animal/plant migration routes (wildlife corridors);
9. Vegetation/animal diversity, productivity, and density enhancement; and
10. Economic activities (logging, hunting fishing, birding, trapping, wildlife observation, and compatible recreational activities)
Wetlands provide habitat which prevents the reduction or extinction of animals and plants. Habitat destruction (loss) is one of the leading causes of animal and plant extinctions.
What Types of Wetlands Are in the Houston Area?
Some of the types of wetlands in the Houston Area include:
1. Bottomland hardwood/riparian streamside woodland wetlands (floodplains);
2. Prairie pothole wetlands (tallgrass prairie Katy Prairie);
3. Brackish/salt marsh wetlands (Gulf of Mexico/Galveston Bay);
4. Freshwater emergent wetlands (natural ponds);
5. Mangrove shrub-scrub wetlands (coast);
6. Baygall shrub-scrub wetlands (woody plants);
7. Seagrasses (West Galveston/Christmas Bays)
What is an Important Wetland in the Houston Area?
Bottomland Hardwood/Riparian Streamside Woodland Wetlands (also calle riparian area, buffer area, vegetation zone, forest zone, streamside management zone, streamside zone, bottomland hardwood forest, etc.) are composed of woody areas (composed of trees) on both sides of a stream that are under the influence of a stream via surface/groundwater and geomorphology (water shaping).
These wetlands are a best management practice (BMP) that is used in forestry activities because they act as filter strips that reduce sedimentation from logging or other ground disturbances. Widths of these wetlands on ephemeral, intermittent, and perennial streams should be wide enough to accommodate, enhance, and maintain all benefits, uses, values, and functions that these wetlands provide. Research documents that wider bottomland hardwoods and riparian woodland wetlands provide:
1. More habitat and use by Gray Squirrels.
2. Birds use perches, shrubby vegetation, and mature trees in riparian woodlands.
3. Greater bird abundance. Interior forest birds like Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Acadian Flycatcher, Yellow-throated Vireo, and Pileated Woodpecker require wider riparian woodlands to survive.
4. White-Tailed Deer show a significant preference for riparian woodlands during the fall/winter in East Texas.
Before settlement in Texas there were approximately 16 million acres of bottomland hardwood forests and other riparian woodlands. In 1980, an estimate was made that 6,068,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forests and other riparian woodlands were left in Texas.
This 1980 estimate, a 60% loss of these wetlands, included 3,062,000 acres of riparian woodlands that existed east of the Navasota River, 1,169,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forest in East Texas, and 1,742,000 acres of riparian woodlands in the rest of Texas.
A study conducted by Texas A&M, which looked at wetland losses between 1992 and 2010, found that Harris County had lost almost 30% of its wetlands during this time period. Most of these wetlands were scattered, freshwater wetlands which help reduce flooding and water pollution by delaying, evaporating, and infiltrating flood waters.
Why Are Wetlands Disappearing?
Hurricanes, rivers, streams, and other natural features or phenomena can destroy wetlands. Humans are responsible for most wetland losses. Humans destroy wetlands, legally/illegally, by:
1. Drainage;
2. Dredging;
3. Filling;
4. Residential/commercial/institutional/industrial developments;
5. Dams/reservoirs;
6. Logging;
7. Road building;
8. River/stream channel modifications (wider/deeper);
9. Reduced/increased water flows;
10. Overuse of ground/surface waters;
11. Recreation;
12. Plant/animal invasive species introduction/spread;
13. Lack of regulation;
14. Poor permit programs;
15. Failure to acquire important wetlands;
16. Poor mitigation for wetland losses;
17. Poor court decisions;
18. Ignorance/poor education;
19. Poor policy decisions;
20. And many other human activities.
How Do We Regulate Protection of Wetlands?
We currently have few or no local and state laws which protect wetlands from development and other human activities. Under the federal Clean Water Act, there is a Section 404 program, operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency oversight, which allows wetland destruction activities (a permit) if wetland losses are mitigated and meet the stated goal of “no net loss of wetlands”.
This goal is difficult to achieve because of the lack of knowledge about how to create wetlands, how to protect and maintain them (mitigation), a lack of money, personnel, other resources, and political will to enforce the law.
The courts and presidential administrations have reduced the effectiveness of Section 404 by rulings and changes in political policy. One example of how this has occurred is by protection only of wetlands that meet certain soil, water, and plant criteria, called jurisdictional wetlands, versus other wetlands which meet two out of three of these criteria and are called non-jurisdictional wetlands. This means that wetland losses are even greater than those reported in this article.
A further way that wetlands have not been protected is that the Trump Administration has altered the wetland definition of how wetlands connect to streams/rivers. This altered definition means that many wetlands are now no longer considered jurisdictional and do not have to undergo the Section 404 permit program and mitigation for wetland losses. This will, in the future, certainly mean more flooding and poor water quality for Houston.
There are also local, state, and federal programs which acquire wetlands and or provide incentives to private individuals to protect wetlands.
How Can We Better Protect Wetlands?
There are many ways that we can better protect wetlands. It is crucial that we have the political will and education to do something now! Below is a list of some ways to better protect wetlands.
1. Provide a dedicated, permanent, and adequate source of funds at local, state, and federal levels for wetland acquisition/maintenance.
2. Enact local city/county ordinances that protect wetlands and that support a strong, federal, Section 404 permit program.
3. Require all road/other transportation/utility projects bridge, adequately culvert, or re-create wetlands/streams so the natural flows of water (hydrology) are not impeded/changed and wetlands/streams are protected.
4. Require planting of native wetland vegetation in all residential/commercial/institutional/ industrial developments.
5. Keep all future development out of wetlands in the 100/500-year floodplains.
6. Require that climate change be factored into protection/mitigation for wetland losses.
7. Buy water rights to ensure adequate freshwater for wetlands/streams.
8. Monitor wetland/stream mitigation for life, to ensure the mitigation is maintained and provides the natural functioning ecological processes/values/benefits that it should.
9. Priority wetlands (depressional/bottomland hardwood/fresh/brackish/saltwater wetlands) should be mitigated at higher mitigation ratios than 1:1.
10. Allow land protection units to serve as de facto mitigation banks. This includes large federal land units/private land units held by certified land trusts which provide the same functions/values/benefits as wetland mitigation banks.
11. Establish a unified federal, state, and local floodplain buy-out program with a fully funded foundation for immediate use after floods/storms to purchase wetlands and lands that can be turned into wetlands.
12. Under Section 404, do not allow out-of-watershed/out-of-wetland type/out-of-ecosystem mitigation.
13. Require lifelong monitoring of mitigation areas and make this information readily available to the public.
14. Require adequate enforcement of wetland permit conditions/mitigation areas/deed restrictions/conservation easements.
15. Require a comprehensive wetlands education program for developers/property owners/builders/contractors/land surveyors/land preparers/judges/public/elected officials.
16. Require an operation/maintenance (O&M) plan for Section 404 permits and for wetland mitigation.