When European settlers arrived on the North American continent, they considered the forested wetlands they found to be disease-producing wastelands. Such negative attitudes toward these ecologically robust and diverse landscapes persisted well into the 20th century. Even today, the fight to protect and restore such places remains a highly contentious area of environmental and land-use policy.

America’s Forested Wetlands: From Wasteland to Valued Resource, a new book by Jeffrey Stine, a historian at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, explores the long history of American perceptions of—and behavior toward—wetlands, outlining how gradual changes in attitudes and values came to shape public policies on wetlands today. The Forest History Society published Stine’s 81-page book as part of its Issues Series. The publication seeks not to advocate for specific programs but to offer historical perspective, Stine explains. “The series is meant to inform policymakers, as well as environmentalists, timber agencies, landowners and students.”

Dismal swamp

Stine’s research included interviews with scientists, regulators, foresters and environmental activists, as well as archival and library investigations. He also conducted field studies in places such as the Parker Tract on North Carolina’s Albermarle Peninsula—a hardwood swamp forest that represents one of the last remnants of the once-extensive East Dismal Swamp. The Tract is the site of a precedent-setting environmental court case involving the legal limits of converting forested wetlands into highly managed pine plantations.

Stine sought to synthesize the substantial literature dealing with various aspects of wetlands, from hydrology and biology to economics, law, history and popular culture. “I wanted to show how society’s attitudes and understanding have changed over time, and why wetlands are such a contested political subject today,” he says. The book traces how the interplay of agriculture, forestry, land development, hunting, the science of ecology, economics, the environmental movement and the tradition of private property rights all have influenced the fate of these fragile and diminishing landscapes.

Sport Hunters

Early public policy, beginning in the mid-1800s, worked to transform these seemingly useless and dangerous areas into workable and livable terrain. Wetlands were widely “seen in a negative light, and the government helped and encouraged people to drain and fill these lands so that they might be made economically productive,” Stine explains. Although the book addresses wetlands of all types, America’s Forested Wetlands is primarily focused on wetlands with trees 20 feet or taller covering at least 30 percent of their expanse.

A modest shift in federal policy toward the conservation of key wetland habitat came in the early 1930s when, according to Stine, significant declines in the population of migratory waterfowl occurred—a matter of grave concern to the nation’s legions of sport hunters. Public advocacy for wetlands protection thus began not as a partisan issue, but gathered support from both sides of the aisle, Stine says.

Biologists also began to demonstrate the ecological services provided by wetlands, such as their contributions to water quality. This knowledge helped to foster an awareness of the economic trade-off between preserving a wetland as a natural water filter and converting the land for development, which often requires a water-treatment facility.

Private property

During the 1960s, the desire for more outdoor recreation opportunities rose along with the country’s population. This led to increased pressure to preserve forested wetlands for fishing, hunting, boating and hiking. Soon wetlands—along with wilderness areas and whales—became a rallying point for environmental activists. Given the country’s long tradition of upholding the rights of private-property owners, policymakers have had to balance the use of these lands for development with their importance to wildlife preservation, watershed protection and similar long-term social goals.

“Wetlands regulation may be the most controversial issue in environmental law,” observed legal scholars Oliver Houck and Michael Rolland in 1995. “It pits America’s most biologically productive and most rapidly diminishing ecosystems against rights of private ownership and property development in more than 10,000 individual permit decisions a year.”

Ivory bill

The reported sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker in 2005 served as an inspiration and guide to Stine when he was completing his book. The bird, whose last confirmed sighting took place in the 1940s, had long been assumed to be extinct.

“Prior to the fragmentation of the nation’s far-reaching bottomland forests, the ivory bill’s range extended from Texas to North Carolina and from Missouri to Florida and on south to Cuba,” Stine says. The bird’s possible rediscovery in the swamp forests of eastern Arkansas spurred conservation of its likely habitats. Similarly, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita “showed the practical value of wetlands” Stine adds. Aerial reconnaissance after the storms revealed that areas where marshes were preserved suffered far less damage than where marshes had been filled in and used for development.

Stine explains that his task as a historian is not to provide answers to public policy questions but to further comprehension of how the policies evolved. “Understanding the history of society’s attitudes and actions toward these irreplaceable landscapes may not resolve the challenges facing society,” he says, “but it is essential for assisting in that effort and helping to avoid the pitfalls of the past.”