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Where a wetland is described as "manipulated", this might mean that it has been drained, dredged, filled, levelled, or altered in some other way to allow agriculture or development to take place on the site. [8] If manipulation of wetlands results in unavoidable adverse impacts, compensatory mitigation measures are used to offset these impacts.
In the United States, compensatory mitigation is a commonly used form of environmental mitigation and, for some projects, it is legally required under the Clean Water Act 1972. Compensatory mitigation is defined by the US Department of Agriculture as "measures to restore, create, enhance, and preserve wetlands to offset unavoidable adverse ...
"No Net loss" is the United States government's overall policy goal regarding wetlands preservation. The goal of the policy is to balance wetland loss due to economic development with wetlands reclamation, mitigation, and restorations efforts, so that the total acreage of wetlands in the country does not decrease, but remains constant or increases.
Biodiversity banking emerged from wetland mitigation banking in the United States, beginning in the 1980s and arising from the no net loss policies developed with the Clean Water Act in the 1970s. [6] Since then the concept has been extended, including its application to the bond market. [7] [8]
The idea of "no net loss" emerged in the United States as a goal for applying environmental mitigation measures (such as mitigation banking) to wetland conservation. [14] This was motivated by the historic and ongoing loss of wetlands - over half of the original wetlands in the lower 48 states have been lost.
A wetland (aerial view) Wetland conservation is aimed at protecting and preserving areas of land including marshes, swamps, bogs, and fens that are covered by water seasonally or permanently due to a variety of threats from both natural and anthropogenic hazards. Some examples of these hazards include habitat loss, pollution, and invasive species.
Conservation banking is derived from wetland mitigation banks that were created in the early 1990s. Through Federal agency efforts, mitigation banks were created to focus on preserving wetlands, streams, and other aquatic habitats or resources and offered compensatory mitigation credits to offset unavoidable effects on the habitats or resources ...
A simplified definition of wetland is "an area of land that is usually saturated with water". [14] More precisely, wetlands are areas where "water covers the soil, or is present either at or near the surface of the soil all year or for varying periods of time during the year, including during the growing season". [15]