Diminishing wetlands

Right now in the U.S., we have approximately seven and a half million acres of wetlands, or about 118,000 square miles. That, though, is half what it was in 1921. Many of those miles of wetlands erased by, Yes, people expanding farmland, building malls, homes and roads, and so as a result, even as people are learning how valuable wetlands are, we're losing a lot of our wetlands. Terri Cosby, the acting chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service. The Fish and Wildlife Service, estimates we're still losing about 50,000 acres of wetlands every year. Some of that to climate change, sinking coastal lands, rising sea levels, but much of it to development. Terry Cosby says it's becoming more apparent to more people how vital a wetland area is to the environment. It provides a lot of benefits for wildlife, for migratory birds, for pollinators. These wetlands serve a valuable function. Including acting as a giant sponge, cleaning and filtering water supplies of many towns and cities. You can just imagine this big sponge out there and just soaking up. And then by the time it releases it, it's filtered out pollutants as they're filtered out the soil particles. It's just a filter system, just like we would do with the intake system on some of these water filter systems out there.