The fate of one critically endangered natural resource – our precious wetlands – could spell either failure or success for all that we do to protect clean water.
Without healthy wetlands, our clean water goals would be nearly impossible to achieve.
- We depend on wetlands to help buffer against drought, flooding and fire.
- They filter pollution.
- They turn sunlight into food and nurture entire ecosystems that support plants, animals, recreation, seafood and millions of jobs here in the U.S. alone.
- Wetlands are at the heart of the systems that deliver clean water for us to drink.
And we’re losing our valuable wetlands at an ever-increasing rate. Already, wetlands are among our most endangered natural resources. Bulldozed, paved over, filled in. Obliterated to make way for chemical-intensive industrial farms, sacrificed to big developers, decimated by oil and gas development.
More than half of all U.S. wetlands have already been permanently lost. Wetlands were targeted for destruction under Trump’s Dirty Water rule, and the pace of destructive development projects increased.