Louisiana coastal wetlands: a resource at risk

Approximately half the Nation's original wetland habitats have been lost over the past 200 years. In part, this has been a result of natural evolutionary processes, but human activities, such as dredging wetlands for canals or draining and filling for agriculture, grazing, or development, share a large part of the responsibility for marsh habitat alteration and destruction. Louisiana's wetlands today represent about 40 percent of the wetlands of the continental United States, but about 80 percent of the losses. The State's wetlands extend as much as 130 kilometers inland and along the coast for about 300 kilometers. Not all the wetlands are receding; in fact some wetlands are stable, and others are growing. But, at the present net rate of wetlands loss, Louisiana will have lost this crucial habitat in about 200 years. Considerable effort has been expended, and will continue to be expended, on understanding the processes that control wetlands evolution.