The Oldest Operating Wetland Mitigation Bank In The U . S . A Review

The construction of a wetland as a means of compensating for the loss of a natural wetland has been an operative practice in the management of the resource for many years. Generally, compensation by creation of new areas is a last resort in the mitigation sequencing used by wetlands management programs. Typically, development of a land parcel must first attempt to avoid any wetlands present. Where this is not possible, the degree of impact is brought to a practical minimum. Finally, any unavoidable losses associated with a desired project are compensated by replacing the affected wetland with an anthropogenic counterpart. In the early applications of a no net loss policy, replacement was attempted somewhere on the same site creating the same general type of wetland (Barnard and Mason 1990). This approach has generally proved practical only for small projects on relatively large sites when existing conditions allowed establishment of appropriate hydrologic conditions.