March 2024 highlights the benefits of wetlands

chase.bergeson • March 29, 2024

Wetland monitoring is important not only for the data we collect, but also to provide hands on education about why wetlands matter. Wetlands can provide so many benefits to humans and the environment, including creating habitat, flood reduction, filtering out pollution, settling sediment, storing carbon, recharging aquifers that we rely on for drinking water, and providing recreation opportunities for humans! 


While not every wetland provides all of these services, this March we experienced many of these benefits during our monitoring visits. 


Habitat 

Wetlands provide important habitat for many species. This spring we conducted amphibian surveys at each of our sites and saw lots of amphibians! Wetlands are very important for the lifecycles of many amphibians who live in them, rely on them for food and habitat, or use them as nurseries to lay their eggs and protect their young. Unlike lakes and streams, ephemeral wetlands are not wet year-round. The periodic drying of surface water in these wetlands prevents them from being habitat for fish which may eat young salamanders. 

Our spring wetlands made a great nursery for amphibians and provide habitat for adults as well. We saw: 

  • mating American toads 
  • spotted salamander egg masses 
  • larval marbled salamanders 
  • northern cricket frogs 
  • a southern leopard frog 
  • upland chorus frogs 
  • northern dusky salamanders 
  • southern two-lined salamanders 


There were also several frogs that we couldn’t catch a picture of fast enough to identify. You can view our observations on our iNaturalist page. 


City skyline

spotted salamander egg mass

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Birthday Sparks

marbled salamander larvae

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Fashion Magazine

southern leopard frog

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Wetlands provide important habitat for many other animals including crayfish, fish, turtles, and birds. We saw several small fish in our wetlands with more permanent water sources. We saw: 

  •  crayfish and their burrows 
  • turtles sunning themselves 
  • a pair of bald eagles fighting over a fish with an osprey. 


Our volunteer birders said they’ve never seen bald eagles at the site before! Birds use wetlands for nesting, breeding, food sources and refuge during migration.  


City skyline

crayfish

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Blurred Lines

eastern mosquitofish

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Flood reduction 

Our forested wetland site at Mason Farm is in the floodplain of Morgan Creek. During large rain events, the water from Morgan Creek is able to flow over its banks into the floodplain wetlands where it can be slowed down and sediment settled out. Water from the urbanized areas of Chapel Hill can flow safely into the floodplain at this point in Morgan Creek. Since there are no homes or structures built in the floodplain, there is also no damage to man-made structures. The floodplain wetlands were very wet during our visit and the water almost came up to the tops of some volunteers’ boots! 



At Hemlock Bluffs, the ephemeral pools at our sites can also hold water during high low events in Swift Creek. The pools were full this month for our first visit since last June! 


City skyline

Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve

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Cleaning water 


While we will have to wait for the results of our water quality sampling to know how our wetlands affected water pollution this spring, there is a need for wetland filtration at all of our sites.  


Robertson Millpond Preserve is in a rural part of Wake County and is surrounded by agricultural fields. Runoff from these fields can send excess nutrients into waterways, which can cause algal blooms and reduce oxygen availability for aquatic life. 


Mason Farm abuts Finley golf course. In fact, we often find several golf balls in the wetlands while sampling. Like agriculture, runoff from golf courses can send excess nutrients from fertilizers into waterways. 

Hemlock Bluffs is centrally located in a very urban area, which comes with its own pollutants, such as lawn care products, oils, grease, and chemicals.  


Although our water quality samples are only analyzed for nitrogen and phosphorus, we hope that our wetlands are reducing nutrients and other pollutants downstream.  


Recreation  


At Mason Farm, we witnessed many community members out enjoying the walking trails through the Reserve and taking advantage of great opportunities for birding, watching eagles and woodpeckers. 


At Robertson Millpond Preserve, some of our volunteers took the opportunity to go for a paddle through the Cypress trees after monitoring. In October 2022, the Volunteer Wetlands Monitoring Program hosted a paddle at Robertson millpond, too! 


At Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve we use their walking trails around the wetlands to access our sites. The trails are open to the public, and the Preserve hosts programming that lets students and volunteers get up loser to the wetlands. 

Protect our wetlands 


For these reasons and many more, protection of our wetlands is important. Now more than ever, NC wetlands are at risk of degradation and destruction due to changes in federal and state regulations impacting their protections.  


Restoration of wetlands is also important. Wetlands can provide us with so many benefits, but can be degraded over time by human impacts. Too many pollutants and nutrients entering a wetland can overwhelm wetlands' capacity to store them. Excessive sediment from upstream flooding can also reduce flood storage. These, among other changes, can negatively impact sensitive plants and wildlife as well. As part of Governor Cooper’s newly issued Executive Order 305, North Carolina has new goals of preserving 1,000,000 acres and restoring another 1,000,000 acres of natural lands, with a focus on wetlands. We are hopeful about what this will mean for North Carolina wetlands in the future. 


Volunteer leadership 


Special thanks to our volunteer team leaders who started leading parts of our monitoring last year. This quarter we had several leaders step up, attend trainings, and take full leadership of monitoring at our sites. Special thanks to Leigh Aultman at Hemlock Bluffs, Paul Jadot at Mason Farm, and Tom Schwarcz at Robertson Millpond. In addition to their site-specific leadership, they along with other volunteer leaders Daphne Vogelsang and Mickey Jo Sorrell, will help one another to lead at all sites.  


Additionally, our committed volunteers Riley Westman and Mike Stokes both earned hats for their many hours of volunteer work on this project. Both Mike and Riley have been helpful in the field and behind the scenes, helping to quality control our data. 


The commitment of our volunteers to monitoring and educating other about wetlands is a major success of this program so far!


Nature's Symphony

Breathtaking colors of our planet
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Faces of Humanity

Portraits of people from around the globe
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Sands of Time

Stark beauty of desolate dunes
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Beyond Boundaries

Visual odyssey across continents
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Our project team is working on plans for next year. Keep a look out for more monitoring opportunities and a recap of our monitoring data thus far! Until then, we hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a safe and happy new year!

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Federal Rollbacks Threaten Wetland Protections: What You Need to Know About Senate Bill 5653

By rick.savage • November 3, 2026
The U.S. Congress is poised to weaken federal protection of wetlands. To understand why these changes matter, it helps to know how wetland permitting actually works. How Wetland Permitting Is Supposed to Work Whether the permit goes through the State agency (e.g. NC DEQ or SC DES which reviews water quality impacts) and/or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) and EPA (which review the physical, chemical, and biological impacts), every application is supposed to follow a three-step mitigation sequence: avoid, minimize, and compensate. Avoid. The reviewer works with the applicant to determine whether the impact can be avoided altogether. Often, it can. Minimize. If the impact can’t be avoided, the reviewer and applicant look for ways to reduce it. Compensate. If the remaining impact is large enough, the applicant must compensate for the loss using a formula provided by the ACOE. Mitigation normally takes place in the same watershed and provides the same function as the wetland that was lost. This process takes time, but it is essential. It ensures that applicants don’t overlook options that could spare valuable wetlands. What Senate Bill 5653 Would Change Senate Bill 5653 , the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA),aims to speed up federal and state regulatory decisions on housing and other development projects. But the bill would increase environmental degradation and undermine the federal-state partnerships that protect clean water. Here is the core problem: when permitting is rushed, reviewers can’t carry out the avoid, minimize, and compensate process. More wetlands will be damaged, and there will be no way to make up for the lost wetlands and the benefits they provide. A Weak Answer to the Housing Shortage BAAJA does little to address the real causes of the national housing shortage and construction challenges. Instead, it increases pollution and works against the central goal of the Clean Water Act: to restore and maintain the physical, chemical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters, including wetlands. The bill is an assault on the nation’s rivers, wetlands, estuaries, and lakes. It also looks like a deflection from Congress’s inability to pass legislation that meaningfully tackles the lack of available housing. Undercutting State Authority Over Water Quality BAAJA also limits the authority states hold under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, making it harder for them to meet the water quality standards they have set for their own waterbodies. That would set back five decades of progress toward cleaner water, progress to which every sector of society has contributed, and it would affect generations to come. Fewer Wetlands Protected, and Weaker Review for the Rest This is yet another attack on wetland protection, and it affects all of us. Even those wetlands that remain regulated after recent jurisdictional retreats by EPA and the ACOE would not receive the normal permitting review. In practice, that means they aren’t truly protected either. What You Can Do Contact your representative. Ask your senators to oppose Senate Bill 5653 . You can find and contact your U.S. senators here , or look up your U.S. representative here to share your concerns with the House as well. Support Carolina Wetlands Association. We are your organization fighting to protect wetlands. The next time you explore a wetland or pour a clean glass of water, consider making a donation to help us keep up this work.

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Federal Rule Would Strip Protections from Many Wetlands and Streams

By kim.matthews • October 7, 2026
On September 9, 2026, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (SNPRM) offering additional ways to define “waters of the United States” (WOTUS). Why this definition matters The WOTUS definition determines which water bodies the federal government can protect under the Clean Water Act. In November 2025, the agencies proposed revisions to bring the definition in line with the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Sackett v. EPA. After taking public comments, they have now put forward further options. The new proposal narrows federal jurisdiction even more, potentially stripping protections from the vast majority of U.S. wetlands and seasonal streams. What our comment letter says The Carolina Wetlands Association is submitting comments opposing the proposal. Our main concerns: It would undermine the Clean Water Act’s purpose. The law’s goal is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters. This proposal would severely undercut that goal. The “days of water” test is a poor measure. The proposal decides jurisdiction by how many days a year water is present. That number correlates poorly with a waterway’s ability to carry pollution downstream to the rivers, lakes, and estuaries that would stay protected. Streams dry for as few as 30 days a year could lose protection, and polluters would have an incentive to discharge into them rather than into protected waters. Drinking water is at risk. About 56% of North Carolina’s stream miles feeding public drinking water systems are intermittent, ephemeral, or headwater streams. In South Carolina the figure is 51%. These systems serve 6.6 million people, who would bear higher health risks and treatment costs. Wetlands do critical work. They filter pollutants and nutrients that cause algal blooms, dead zones, and fish kills. Losing that function would also degrade groundwater, which many people drink untreated. The legal reasoning is flawed. We argue the agencies misread the Supreme Court’s language. “Relatively permanent” describes geographic features such as streams with defined beds and banks. The word “continuously” modifies “flowing” and doesn’t limit what counts as relatively permanent. It would be hard to implement. Many affected streams have no data showing how many days they lack surface water. That makes the rule difficult for agencies to administer and leaves landowners unable to tell whether the Clean Water Act applies to their property. The impacts haven’t been analyzed. The agencies should not finalize a rule before measuring the added pollution flowing from newly unprotected waters into those that supply drinking water, or projecting the resulting damage to downstream uses. What you can do Read the SNPRM Submit your comment by October 9, 2026, under Docket ID No. EPA–HQ–OW-2025-0322 . Personal stories about the streams, wetlands, and drinking water you depend on are especially effective. Learn more: read the comments we submitted on the November 2025 version of the rule, many of which still apply.