Wetlands store water, release it slowly and help to reduce the frequency and severity of floods. Water can’t be in two places at once, thus, water that is stored in a wetland isn’t in someone’s basement.]
Water that’s in a wetland…isn’t in the James, Red, Sheyenne or Big Sioux Rivers.
Water that’s in a wetland…isn’t in Devils Lake or Waubay Lake.
To date, 66,000 wetlands have been drained in the Devils Lake basin. These include mostly the smallest and easiest to drain. Even so, those wetlands stored 149,000 acre feet of water. However, if we lost half of the 49,000 wetlands that remain in the Devils Lake basin, with 463,000 acre feet of storage, levels of Devils Lake would rise two feet.
The Prairie Pothole states, Dakotas, MN, IA, MT, have 2.7 million wetland basins and 78,9 percent are one acre in size or less. These are the same wetlands that former Senate Majority leader and Presidential Candidate, Bob Dole, proposed draining.
The Migratory Bird Management Analysis study showed that if all one acre and smaller wetlands farmed six years out of ten were to be drained because of changes in the Swampbuster program, the decrease in the fall flight of ducks would be about 48 percent.
North Dakota still has about 1.5 million undrained wetlands…but has lost about half the original number of wetlands. And, less than 39 percent of North Dakota wetlands are protected by easement.
Of North Dakota’s wetlands, 16 percent are temporary, 44 percent are seasonal and 38 percent are semi-permanent. In South Dakota, nearly 90 percent of the wetlands are either seasonal or temporary.
Most often, the rationale for wetland drainage has been to increase agricultural production and improve the lot of farmers. Thus, it seems a historical look at wetland drainage is in order.
North Dakota had 70,000 farms in 1920. South Dakota had 77,000 farms in 1914. Today, in both states, after deducting hobby farms and acreages, there are about 22,000 remaining farms.
Draining wetlands hasn’t preserved family farms. Nor has it helped the average farmer. We have an almost annual farm crisis. Prices remain low and adding more acres of production won’t help farmers. It will only glut the market and reduce prices even more.
So who wins when drainage occurs?
Logic tells us that only those who build bigger tractors and implements, the purveyors of seed and chemicals, and the drainage contractor, come out ahead.
