Why WE Are Wetlands

Wetlands and clean water touch everyone's lives, providing a wide variety of societal, economic and recreational benefits. Parents want clean drinking water for their children. Families want to live where they are not fearful of their homes being flooded. Sportsmen want to protect habitat for fish and wildlife and to enjoy the chance to hunt and fish.

Wetlands help address all of these needs — and many more.

Wetlands are the connections between water and land. They can be wet year-round, but often only are seasonally moist. Wetlands include the things we call:

• marshes
• swamps
• bogs
• fens
• prairie potholes
• playa lakes
• vernal pools, and
• intermittent and ephemeral streams

However we choose to refer to them, a truth holds: wetlands are among the most productive and fertile ecosystems in the world.

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