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World Wetlands Day-February 2nd-Why It's Important You Care!

World Wetlands Day -February 2nd-Why It’s Important You Care!

Today, February 2nd is World Wetlands Day and has had that designation since 1971 when several countries came together in Ramsar, Iran and signed the Convention on Wetlands. Thankfully these leaders had the foresight 41 years ago to realize the importance of our natural wetlands areas in the sustained health of our planet.

Green cay


What are Wetlands? Basically they’re ground areas that are saturated seasonally or year round with water. The water can be fresh, salt or even brackish. They’re not just large puddles of water that collect after a heavy rainfall, but are distinguished by the vegetation that thrive in their area.

What’s important is that Wetlands act as :

Water purification systems
Flood control
Shoreline stability
Reservoirs of “biodiversity”

The United States has 30 designated Wetland area sites. If you’ve read any of my posts on Green Cay.. it is a man-made wetlands area. It’s primary purpose is water reclamation, where several million gallons of treated water are filtered each day. The attraction of the many varied wildlife and fauna are the icing on the cake!

Here are just a few interesting facts to hopefully get you interested:

In the developing world 1 in 5 people lack clean drinking water.
In Maryland there has been a 73% loss of wetlands since the 1700’s.
Ohio has lost 90% of its wetlands.
Virginia has a 42% loss since the 1700’s.
The Cypress swamps in Florida can remove 98% or the nitrogen and
97% of the phosphorous pollution preventing contamination
in the groundwater.

Green cay bird

Posted Thursday Feb 02