Top Wetland Habitat W etlands serve an invaluable role in maintaining the quality of county streams, rivers, ponds and lakes. Wetlands not only serve to filter pollutants from our waterbodies, but also provide areas of groundwater recharge. Riparian wetlands slow flood waters, allowing sediments to settle out in the floodplain. These removed sediments would otherwise remain in the stream eroding stream banks, smothering important aquatic habitat areas, and contributing to lowering the quality of county streams and rivers. Wetlands also serve other functions and provide requisite habitat for many plant and animal species that are found in no other type of habitat.
Wetlands also serve another critical functional role by providing necessary habitat for amphibians.
Many frog, toad, and salamander species return to the same wetland area every year to breed. As these wetland areas are lost, the local populations using them can be lost as well. The supporting web of life can be so weakened that species can be extirpated from local watersheds. This has reached national concern, and has happened locally in Sligo Creek. Only through an intensive interagency effort have some amphibian species been successfully re-introduced.