How the private sector can protect wetlands

With Congress polarized and gridlocked, new federal wetland-protection laws are unlikely to be enacted in the next several years.

Wetlands aren’t the most eye-catching ecosystems. They include swamps, bogs, fens, and other places where soil is covered by water most of the time. But they perform a huge range of valuable services, from soaking up floodwaters to filtering out pollutants and providing habitat for thousands of species of mammals, fish, reptiles, insects, and birds.