Whither the Wetlands

The Wisconsin legislature has been very good at not only overturning, often at the behest of developers, issues once thought to be the province of local control, but also to rewrite environmental regulations. First it was high capacity wells, and now it is wetlands. The action began, so they say, innocently enough, to allow farmers and homeowners to fill small pockets of wetlands in which certain wetland indicators now exist. While not a wetland biologist, as a planner I have worked with wetlands for more than 35 years. Wetlands are dynamic, influenced by precipitation, and other factors. I will be the first to admit that there have been small pockets of soil removed by an owner, for some odd reason or other, that became a wetland. But the DNR would do a pretty good job of historical analysis and often made appropriate determinations. What seems to be forgotten are the reasons why there were wetland protections in the first place. We can see the effects today of non-wetland regulations: flooding, developments with continuous water in the basements, lack of biodiversity.

Frac Sand Mine in Wisconsin

But, yet this story is not unique. Our American history is made up of bountiful stories of human desire to do what it pleases to nature. I call it human hubris. These stories often they fit the narrative of their time. Well recognized environmental historian William Cronon, wrote in 1992, while at Yale (he is now at the UW Madison), of the frontier thesis posed by Fredrick Jackson Turner (who taught at the UW until about 1910) saying that “Turner saw the transformation of the American landscape from wilderness to trading post, to farm to boomtown as the central saga of the nation.” If one thinks of the Homestead act, you do have to realize, as Cronon would also point out that: “ ‘Free land” could only become plausible by obscuring the conquest that traded one people’s freedom for another’s.” The story of pioneers and their struggles to transform the wilderness has been popularized by movies, literature and television shows, think “Little House on the Prairie.” What becomes important are stories that are told, the narratives we allow to enter our minds and hearts. They form our history.

I recall one time consecutively reading two works on the transcontinental railroad, one by Stephen Ambrose, and the other, I believe, by David Bain. Ambrose admits he went into the project thinking it would be a boondoggle of corruption, but at the end, the title would best tell his conclusion: Nothing Like it in the World. Ambrose would pose a celebratory look at this massive undertaking and how it was able to draw the country together. Bain, however, found what Ambrose thought he would initially find—corruption and a boondoggle of a public work project. Bain is not afraid to put modern sensibility into this historical event. Drawing two different conclusions is not uncommon. Cronon, in his 1992 work refers to two works, each about the dust bowl, written in the same year, and using many of the same sources. Yet they came to two different conclusions. The first views those that stuck out this time of drought on the great plains as the “triumph of individualism and community spirit” where humans cleaned up nature’s mess, as Cronon puts it. The other, however, would be more about human hubris and an inability of humans to accommodate themselves to nature. 

Wetland to be affected by Frac Sand Mine Road

Wilderness and nature is a paradox in the modern world. Many of us enjoy our trips to what we now know as wilderness, but western ethos often have credited and held up high those who have built upon it. Frederick Jackson Turner created a narrative that well fit the ethos of the era. Properly planned, however, the wilderness and man can coexist. Without proper planning problems arise. That is what the legislature is now doing. Case in point, is special allowance for a Georgia Company to fill a rare hardwood wetland in Monroe County. The wetland that the company, Meteor, wishes to fill is over 13 acres of a 16 acre white pine and red maple wetland rated as exceptional and said to be irreplaceable. Showing once again the hubris of man, and legislators, the company says they will replace the wetland, even though that has never been successfully accomplished. It is easy to destroy an ecosystem, much more difficult to recreate it. Meteor wants to build the road to serve a frac sand mine, as if Wisconsin lacks locations for frac sand mining. (Frac sand mining, is a whole other issue.) The legislature and the governor make it seem that you cannot have economic development without environmental regulations. Yet, Minnesota seems to be doing well on both counts. Perhaps the tide is turning, as the Wisconsin State Journal has an article today on whether the GOP will loose sportsman because of the pro-development stance they have taken. When I pointed out to a developer this past week that there was a small pocket of wetlands on property he wised to develop, he simply said, he would just wait for the new state legislation to pass.

While in college, oh so very long ago, a professor in one of my conservation courses defined conservation as simply the wise use of resources. In his encyclical “Laudato Si” Pope Francis makes the same point when he says: Each community can take from the bounty of the earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations.” It is once again time for us to look at the wise use of our resources and world that has been entrusted to us. It is time for the nation to move on from the old 19th century narrative to justify the industrial revolution to one that is more balanced. What the past few years of hurricane damage, and other climatic events should teach us is that nature is very difficult to control and has a way of reclaiming what had been taken. A renewed conservation ethic is required.