What Is a Wetland Worth?

Annie was unable to travel for her book. She imagined going into the English fens and the disappearing Siberia mires. Her feet would bounce on rafts of sphagnum moss as she explored the southeastern swamps, compared to walking on a water bed. Proulx, who is 87 years old, was stuck indoors. She draws from her personal collection of books, conversations, and memories of swamp appreciation in the forward to Fen, Bog, and Swamp. Her mother was the first to give birth. Proulx learned how to navigate the grassy tussocks around channels of sodden or submerged ground when he was a child. She was able to experience a place of wonder, even delight, because of the bugs, muck, and stench.

It is not likely that many of the places she remembers are still there. She wrote that the history of wetlands is the history of their destruction. The swamps of southern New England have been taken over by suburban development and draining for hundreds of years. People hang nature's sponges out to dry until the land is strong enough to support a farm or a strip mall. It takes a long time to get a perspective on the losses. Proulx puts it that way.

Most of the world’s wetlands came into being as the last ice age melted, gurgled and gushed. In ancient days fens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries were the Earth’s most desirable and dependable resource places, attracting and supporting myriad species. The diversity and numbers of living creatures in springtime wetlands and overhead must have made a stupefying roar audible from afar. We wouldn’t know.

Proulx, who has previously traced humanity's instinct to ravage nature in fictional works, is the latest in a long line of wetlands enthusiasts. She says that before her, there were painters and writers who found inspiration in swamps, which others considered ugly. There were lepidopterists and ornithologists who liked to explore the unique flora that could allow a species of insect or bird to evolve and thrive just there. This didn't stop the waves of "ecological violence" as Proulx calls it. The people wanted to tame the wetlands for uses they considered productive. They didn't know how productive those places were through services like flood protection.

Wetlands have long been a confused impulse in America. Our kindness is often not enough to preserve them as a whole. When the scion of a family of tract home developers decides to put herself on the auction block for a charity date, the television show Arrested Development puts it best. She thinks the money will be used to dry them.

It's difficult to get people to value a place that gives them so many things. It can be difficult to appreciate all the things the ecosystems do for us, and harder still to see that value in a way that extends beyond our needs. She believes that we must.

Lawyers will gather at the Supreme Court in a few weeks to argue about the value of wetlands. A couple in their thirties bought a vacant lot in a subdivision near Priest Lake in Idaho. Thanks to the Kalispell Bay Fen, a type of mineral-rich wetlands, the lake is an ideal environment for fish. The US Army Corps of Engineers looked at the future property of the Sacketts and included it in the wetlands protected under the Clean Water Act. The goal of the federal law was to restore and maintain the integrity of the nation's waters.

The Sacketts built their home a few years later. The couple received a visit from federal inspectors who ordered them to stop filling in their property with gravel and sand and apply for a federal permit under threat of fines. The legal saga began fifteen years ago. Lawyers for the Sacketts have argued in court that the permitting process is unfair and violates their property rights. The National Association of Home Builders and the US Chamber of Commerce agree on this.