National Wetlands Inventory

Introduction to NWI status and trends reporting

National Wetlands Status and Trends Reports

Other Wetlands Status and Trends Reports
• South Carolina's Wetlands
• Southeast Wetlands
• Texas Coastal Wetlands
• History of Wetlands in the United States

All NWI publications -

2000 Report Summary Findings:
The Emergency Wetlands Resources Act of 1986 requires the Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct status and trend studies of the Nation's wetlands, and report the results to Congress each decade. This is the third national wetlands report by the Service.

The Report provides the most recent and comprehensive estimates of the current status and trends of wetlands in the United States on public and private lands from 1986 to 1997. Major report findings follow.

• In 1997, there were an estimated 105.5 million acres of wetlands in the conterminous United States. Of this total, 100.5 million acres (95 percent) are freshwater wetlands and 5 million acres (5 percent) are saltwater wetlands.
• Between 1986 and 1997, a net of 644,000 acres of wetlands was lost.
• The Service reported to the Congress that the estimated wetland loss rate is now 58,500 acres annually. This represents an 80% reduction from the previous decade.
• Forested wetlands experienced the greatest decline of all wetland types, with a loss of 1.2 million acres (2.4 percent change). For the first time in the Nation's history, there are fewer than 50 million acres of forested wetlands in the conterminous United States. Freshwater emergent wetlands declined by 1 million acres (4.6 percent change) during the study period.
• Freshwater vegetated wetlands continued to decline, while freshwater ponds continued to increase by nearly 13% in the last decade. Trends indicate that the acreage of ponds is now about equal to that of all estuarine wetlands.
• Estuarine emergent wetlands declined slightly by 14,450 acres. Most of these wetlands were lost to urban and other types of development in coastal areas.
• The analysis during this study period attributed causes of wetland losses nationally to: Urban Development (30%), Agriculture (26%), Silviculture (23%), and Rural Development (21%).
• Although the Nation has not met the goal of no net loss of wetlands, substantial progress has been made in reducing the rate of loss.

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