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Great Lakes
Article:
Forum focuses on saving state's
coastal wetlands
By Corydon Ireland
Democrat and Chronicle
04/02/04
New York’s Great Lakes coastal wetlands are under increasing
pressure from developers and local municipalities need
more money, research and cooperation to reverse the trend.
That’s the broad outline of concerns raised at the 10th
annual New York State Wetlands Forum, a two-day gathering
that wrapped up Thursday.
Consultants, researchers, regulators and policymakers
converged at the Rochester Institute of Technology Inn
and Conference Center to discuss the fate of these ecologically
vital marshes, which prevent erosion, filter storm runoff
and provide wildlife habitat.
"It’s all about clean water, and wetlands are the
foundation of that," said biologist Diane C. Kozlowski,
who oversees permit activity at the Buffalo regional office
of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Even tiny marshy areas can play a big ecological role,
she said, praising a recent University of Rochester wetland
replacement project - just 2.6 acres - that protected
a community of chorus frogs.
State law protects wetlands 12.4 acres or larger, as
well as a 100-foot buffer zone. Federal law has no size
minimum.
New York has 2.5 million acres of wetlands, one-third
of them in the Great Lakes basin. But that only represents
half of the acreage in pre-settlement times, said Donald
Zelasny, Great Lakes programs coordinator for the state
Department of Environmental Conservation.
New York now spends $2.5 million a year to clean up and
protect fisheries, which are largely wetlands. The funding
helps protect the state’s $3 billion-a-year fishing industry.
There are 21 wetlands-related bills in the state Legislature,
said Zelasny, and the state gained about 15,000 acres
of wetlands in the last 10 years. But what’s needed most,
he said, is "a common vision, a united approach"
to saving wetlands, drawing in Great Lakes governors,
regulators and municipalities.
The threat to wetlands is one of many "downward
pressures" in the Great Lakes region, said Margaret
Wooster, a consultant with the Buffalo-based Great Lakes
United, an education and advocacy group.
In the last five years, Lake Erie has seen five outbreaks
of avian botulism, killing loons and other water fowl
and reaching Lake Ontario last year. There’s a rising
number of exotic species in the lakes (162 this year),
along with persistent beach closings, fish advisories
and smog alerts that signal air pollution sifting into
the Great Lakes.
But Wooster said Congress is considering two similar
Great Lakes restoration bills, worth $4 billion to $6
billion over five or 10 years, some of it for restoring
wetlands.
To get a fair share of that money, she said, counties,
cities, towns and conservation groups have to identify
- ahead of time - projects worth funding.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency might help,
with its 2004 "habitat initiative," said Mario
del Vicario, chief of ecosystem issues for the regional
EPA office in Manhattan.
A contractor is studying potential project sites in New
York and other states, he said, and compiling data on
wetlands and other at-risk habitats.
"There’s still a lot to be done," said del
Vicario.
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