Since early European settlers arrived in the coastal bays watershed, some 51,000 acres of non-tidal and about 1,500 acres of tidal wetlands have been lost to a combination of agriculture and development. This loss is higher than in any other Maryland county.

Because wetlands provide benefits such as flood and erosion control, improved water quality, sediment stabilization, groundwater recharge, and essential wildlife habitat, their proper functioning to the health of the coastal bays watershed as a whole is critical.

For this reason, the Coastal Bays Program has enlisted the help of the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) and Salisbury University to look at ways to save wetlands and restore their proper functioning.

The MDE study is looking at ways to help bolster mitigation in the coastal bays watershed. While thousands of acres have been lost, natural resource agencies have had difficulty finding landowners willing to create wetlands in the high-priced Isle of Wight and Assawoman watersheds where most of the wetland losses are occurring. It has been a policy of the Coastal Bays Program to have its partners replace wetlands in the same subwatershed where they were lost. Restoring wetlands in the southern bays to compensate for those lost in the north could render the bays north of Route 50 a lifeless zone.

To preclude this eventuality, MDE has undergone an extensive evaluation of potential sites for mitigation. Criteria consider groundwater, soils, water quality and wildlife in determining the best locations. Scientists can then overlay willing landowners to find the highest priority sites. Additional dollars are also being sought to entice the would-be conservationists.

Equally challenging is Salisbury University’s work to evaluate how to better protect wetlands in the coastal bays watershed and to see if enforcement is sufficient and if replaced wetlands are functioning as those lost did.

The researchers are assessing the numbers of existing permits, filling and/or alteration requests, enforcement capacity, fines, and illegal activity— while keeping in mind the Coastal Bays Management Plan goal of replacing 10,000 acres of lost wetlands.

For wildlife, properly functioning wetlands are key in this process. Simple standing water or stormwater management ponds are nothing like the forested wetlands the watershed has lost. They can also cause mosquito proliferation unlike healthy, unaltered non-tidal wetlands which balance predators and prey. For ducks, herons, egrets, and a host of wading birds, the need for quality, unurbanized wetlands is obvious. As “pretty” as mallards and blue herons are, Worcester’s 20 other species of wading birds and 18 or so other species of ducks demand higher rent wetlands. The watershed’s rare amphibians such as barking tree frogs and tiger salamanders are even pickier.

This fact underscores the need to keep existing forested wetlands in an unaltered state. The hidden tragedy in the studies is that they need to be conducted at all. We should never have allowed ourselves to get to a point where our most valued natural asset for wildlife and water quality is subjugated to the whims of commerce.

Still, these two studies will go a long way toward helping to right wrongs and to hopefully safeguard quality of life for both man and beast in the coastal bays watershed for the foreseeable future.

For information on restoring wetlands on your property call Sandy Coyman, director of Worcester County Long-Range Planning at 410-632-5651 or Bruce Nichols at the Natural Resources Conservation Service at 410-632-0939 ext.