Wetlands clean the water we drink, nurture marine life, shelter wildlife, and control floods. Yet by the mid-1980s, half the wetlands in the U.S. had disappeared. Regulating impacts on wetlands created friction between landowners, developers, conservationists, and government agencies. In an effort to mitigate the loss of wetlands, improve wetland regulatory programs, and establish government leadership to protect wetlands, the Conservation Foundation convened the National Wetlands Policy Forum in 1987, of which RESOLVE was a key member.
RESOLVE facilitated meetings of the National Wetlands Policy Forum as well as public workshops in Louisiana, New Jersey, and Washington State. The Forum’s work resulted in a seventy-page consensus document that presented approximately one hundred recommendations on a variety of issues, including promoting private stewardship, improving regulatory programs, establishing government leadership, and providing better information.
Included in the final report was the goal of “no net loss” of wetlands, which was adopted initially by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and then more broadly across the federal government at the direction of then-President George H. W. Bush. The “no net loss” of wetlands goal has guided implementation of wetlands programs ever since.
Between 1987 and 1994, wetland loss declined to just 50,000 acres per year, from almost 500,000 acres per year in the 1950s and 1960s. There are now more than a million acres of wetlands nationwide in the Wetlands Reserve Program.
Excerpt from case summary
Thomas H. Kean Governor, State of New Jersey
Carroll Campbell Governor, State of South Carolina
Booth Gardner Governor, State of Washington
Peter A. A. Berle National Audubon Society
William D. Blair, Jr. The Nature Conservancy
Willard T. Chamberlain ARCO
John DeGrove Florida Atlantic University
Nancy R. Elliott Town of Yorktown Heights, New York
James G. Gosselink Louisiana State University
Peter Grenell California Coastal Conservancy
Jay D. Hair National Wildlife Federation
Dick Hollier Hollier Farms, Inc.
Dennis Kelso Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation
Frederic D. Krupp Environmental Defense Fund
Jack Larsen Weyerhaeuser Company
Melvin Simon Melvin Simon and Associates
F. John Taylor Taylor Grain and Livestock
John Turner Wyoming Senate
Robert Wetherbee National Association of Conservation Districts
Shirley McVay Wiseman National Association of Home Builders
William K. Reilly
Edwin H. Clark II
Gail Bingham (RESOLVE)
Michael Mantell
Leah Haygood (RESOLVE)
Michele Leslie
Paul De Morgan
Regeneration Welcomes a Founding Partnerinfo@resolve.ngo (RESOLVE)May 31, 2023 New RESOLVE-led Study Reveals Opportunities to Restore Large Mammal Assemblages Worldwideinfo@resolve.ngo (RESOLVE)Apr 21, 2022
RESOLVE President Emeritus
Meet the Resolve Team
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