Our children know more about the South American rainforests than they do about the wetlands in their own backyard. A pity, because our local wetlands are beautiful places, but it is a beauty that is not easily accessible to the casual observer. Rainforests are important, of course. They need protection because they are the lungs of the world . Let s make sure our children know about them.
Wetlands are equally as important.
But wetlands are being destroyed here as shamefully fast as are rainforests in South America. Houston has a great diversity of wetlands because we sit at the convergence of prairie and forest, and saltwater and freshwater ecosystems. The ancient rivers that deposited our landscape also carved out a wonderfully complex pattern of wetlands that is our geological legacy. In order to live on this plain, we have had to drain much of the landscape. Land-leveling due to agriculture and paving from development reduced wetland coverage by over 80 percent in some places.