Saturday, December 23, 2017

As WI wetlands are threatened, more warnings near and far

Corporately-obeisant Republicans, with a poor record protecting rivers, lakes and streams, are rushing to remove protection from 1 million acres of wetlands.

They refuse to look at the immediate picture.

NW WI flood damage in 2016 damage, prior to 2017 flooding there, and in SW WI, too.
Or at bigger realities as the climate warms, Trump dismisses the Paris Climate accords, and a known climate change denier and developer is in charge of the US EPA's Great Lakes region.

While flood-resisting wetlands are set to disappear in flood-prone Racine County for Walker's Foxconn/campaign client, and elsewhere, on a stunning scale:
The Pantanal region, the world’s largest tropical wetlands, is starting to wither. Over the last 15 years, about 8,700 square miles of the area, which straddles Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, have been altered, with fast-growing patches of yellow, arid land introduced into the lush biome, which covers roughly 70,000 square miles, or about the size of Syria.
Remember that the Amazon region has been called the lungs of the planet, and we all breathe the same air.

So look closer to home, where Wisconsin's environment is in decline through intentional partisan action, despite long-standing warnings: 
"A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body may be eaten away until it may no longer exist. Our navigable waters are a precious natural heritage, once gone, they disappear forever," wrote the Wisconsin Supreme Court in its 1960 opinion resolving Hixon v. PSC and buttressing The Public Trust Doctrine, Article IX of the Wisconsin State Constitution.

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