{"id":263142,"date":"2010-02-01T23:26:43","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T04:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\/?p=141220"},"modified":"2010-02-01T23:26:43","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T04:26:43","slug":"world-wetland-day-%e2%80%93-why-wetlands-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/263142","title":{"rendered":"World Wetland Day \u2013 Why Wetlands Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wetland.org\/education_wetlandsday.htm\">World Wetland Day<\/a> is tomorrow, February 2nd and although you may not know it, wetlands are actually a huge part of your world.<\/p>\n<p>Wetlands such as bogs, marshes, swamps and so on all have three things in common; water, wetland soil, and wetland plants. If you&#8217;ve got these three things, congratulations, you&#8217;re a wetland. However, most wetlands are much more than this.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/images2.blisstree.com\/files\/2010\/02\/wetland.jpg\" alt=\"wetland\" width=\"590\" height=\"355\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Wetlands house thousands of living creatures and help positively support literally most of the life on this planet. For example, every single freshwater fish on earth depends upon wetlands. Half our bird species live in wetland areas or go there to feed and it&#8217;s estimated that a full third of ALL endangered animals depend on wetlands. In fact, a thriving wetland supports more sorts of life than any other natural habitat on earth.<\/p>\n<p>Wetlands feature plants that only grow in wetlands. If we lose wetlands we also lose plant species and animals. Wetlands also strongly support human lives as well. Even if you don&#8217;t give a single care about animals or plants you should care how wetlands affect you personally.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wetland.org\/\">Environmental Concern Inc<\/a> wetlands help humans in numerious ways&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Wetlands control flooding<\/em> &#8211; Wetlands act as protective natural sponges and capture, store, and slowly release water over time, which means when there is a flood wetlands reduce the sheer impact.<\/li>\n<li> <em>Wetlands protect our coasts<\/em> &#8211; if you like to visit the coastlines than wetlands are vital. Coastal wetlands act as buffers against coastal storms and reduce the impact considerably. Wetlands can mean the difference between a thriving beautiful coastline and one ruined by erosion caused by waves and wind.<\/li>\n<li> <em>Wetlands provide natural <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wisegeek.com\/what-is-groundwater-recharge.htm\">water recharging<\/a><\/em> &#8211; many of our wetland spaces help recharge underground aquifers. Many Americans depend on groundwater for their drinking water and without recharge we could see severely limited supplies.<\/li>\n<li> <em>Wetlands make economic sense<\/em> &#8211; all over the world provide places where we grow staple food items such as rice and they provide commercial timber and animal populations that provide income and goods for people. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peatlandsni.gov.uk\/index.htm\">Peatlands<\/a> even still provide fuel for people.<\/li>\n<li><em>Wetlands provide recreation<\/em> &#8211; which I know we seem to be getting further and further from, but come on, do we really want a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0910970\/\">WALL-E<\/a> situation? Go visit a wetland, not only for the education but because it&#8217;s fun to be outside in nature.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Wetlands do matter and yet over time humans have drained them, polluted them, paved them over to build structures, and more. According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ducks.org\/\">Ducks Unlimited<\/a>, &#8220;<em>The United States alone has lost more than half of its original wetlands and continues to lose more than <strong>80,000 acres<\/strong> of the wetlands most important to wildlife <strong>each year<\/strong>.<\/em>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully you&#8217;re planning on at least considering the wetlands tomorrow. I&#8217;ll be back with some ideas about how you can help protect and restore our wetland spaces. If you want more information before this visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ducks.org\/\">Ducks Unlimited<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wetland.org\/\">Environmental Concern Inc<\/a> &#8211; both offer extensive wetland educational resources.<\/p>\n<p>Post from: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\">Blisstree<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\/articles\/world-wetland-day-why-wetlands-matter\/\">World Wetland Day &#8211; Why Wetlands Matter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>World Wetland Day is tomorrow, February 2nd and although you may not know it, wetlands are actually a huge part of your world. Wetlands such as bogs, marshes, swamps and so on all have three things in common; water, wetland soil, and wetland plants. If you&#8217;ve got these three things, congratulations, you&#8217;re a wetland. However, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}