VALUE OF WETLANDS, 2: Wetlands can save lives ... we'll 
explain on Passport to Texas
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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Wetland ecologist Nathan Kuhn says a wetland is an area 
that's neither open water nor dry land.

"The wetland is a transitional area. So, basically you're talking 
about an area where the soil's saturated for at least two weeks 
or more a year."

Wetlands may not look like much, says Kuhn, but acre per 
acre they pack a huge ecological punch. Wetlands serve 
as critical fish and wildlife habitat.

"Without them, in many cases, we would not have the shrimp, or 
the speckled trout, or whatever, that a lot of people go to the 
Texas coast to enjoy. So, there are a lot of invisible values of 
these wetlands that people don't necessarily realize unless they 
were gone."

And half of them are gone because we don't understand 
their value. Many wetland areas get filled and developed. 
Who wouldn't like a gulf view? The impact of this loss 
mostly goes unnoticed, until nature sends a force like 
Hurricane Katrina or Rita crashing against our shores. 

"We're paying the price for losing half of our coastal wetlands."
 
Dr. Larry McKinney, Director of Coastal Fisheries.

"Because, if I understand some of the analysis, we could have 
taken up to two foot off the top of that storm surge if our 
wetlands had been intact in that area. And there's a huge 
difference between an 18-foot storm surge and a 20-foot storm 
surge as, unfortunately, many people know. So those wetlands 
act as a natural barrier for us."

Learn more about how wetlands work at the TPWD web site. 

That's our show for today ... made possible by a grant from the 
Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program ... For Texas Parks 
and Wildlife ... I'm Cecilia Nasti.