The National Wetlands Awards, sponsored by the Environmental Law Institute and the U.S. Environmental Protection honor individual citizens who have demonstrated excellence and dedication in the field of wetlands protection through programs or projects at the regional, state, and local level. Dr. Zedler has been working for more than 25 years to advance scientific knowledge of salt marsh ecology and the structure and functioning of coastal wetlands. Much of her research has been conducted in the San Diego area, an area with a growing population and a high rate of wetland loss.
Urbanization threatens both the quality and the quantity of the few thousand acres that remain.
But the rarity of the habitat and history of damage caught my attention in the early 1970s and has held it to this day. Over the years, many excellent graduate and post-doctoral students have come to study our coastal wetlands, and we have increased our understanding of this precious resource and developed new tools and techniques for protecting and restoring it. If planting six species allows the wetland to absorb more nitrogen than planting one species, then we will know how to design the next restoration better. She also makes the extra effort to ensure that the knowledge she generates reaches the people who make decisions that affect wetlands in California. Since the early 1980s, she has been working to convince wastewater dischargers that releasing fresh water into the ocean can threaten wildlife by diluting the salinity in their habitat and making way for invasions of non-native species.