Review of Government Involvement, Controversy, and Documents (Abstract)

In the last 150 years, the United States government's policy on wetlands has come full circle. During the colonization of North America and for many years after the birth of the United States, wetlands were considered useless swamps, impediments to progress and settlement. Government programs encouraged the conversion of wetlands to farmland, resulting in the loss of half of the area considered to be wetlands in the lower 48 states. The losses continued through the first half of the 20th century, until scientists began to recognize that wetlands offered significant ecological and economic benefits, pollution and flood control, and recreational opportunities.

Beginning with major legislation in 1972 and stretching into the present, the government's policies have turned toward protecting, preserving, and even creating wetlands through laws, executive orders, regulations, incentive programs, education, and international agreements. Numerous departments and agencies have been given advisory and oversight responsibility for wetlands programs, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Agriculture and its Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the Department of Interior through its Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey. Although these efforts have reduced the rate at which wetlands are lost, the government's turnabout in philosophy and difficulties in policy implementation have generated three significant controversies: confusion over agency roles and authority; disagreement about the definition of a wetland; and concerns about property rights and government "takings" of private land.

The federal government has produced an enormous amount of information concerning wetlands, including maps, technical reports, manuals, scientific studies, hearing transcripts, legislative materials, public education materials, visitor guides, and fact sheets for various constituents. Access--both physical and intellectual--to these documents is made difficult by the government's extensive use of acronyms and jargon, and by the fact that the information is so broadly dispersed across many different agencies. Individually, the agencies have made good use of the World Wide Web, offering on-line access to many important documents and maps, but greater coordination among their information efforts would be helpful to the information user.