Identifying the Limiting Factors to State Wetland Programs

Adequately managing wetlands on private property in the rural areas of the United States has been a regulatory challenge. Voluntary and incentivized programs such as the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) have been an effective and efficient tool for starting to ensure the health of necessary watersheds; however, the WRP is a state ran program that has experienced inconsistent policy success. This study will evaluate factors affecting the WRP to determine their influence upon differing growth rates with shapefiles in Geographic Information System (GIS) software for two comparable Midwest states. As data from the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) indicates recent variance with greater growth of WRP contracts and enrolled acres in Wisconsin than Illinois, this analysis conducts statistical analyses to enable the testing of three hypotheses to explain program variance: urban sprawl, average crop yields, and easement value. Risk analyses indicate that the favored market based approach— demonstrated by WRP—may not be appropriate for all state areas attempting wetland management. Although unpopular to many private landowners, a command and control approach may be imperative for the sustained life of wetlands. As states have differing capacity to manage wetlands within their borders, it is imperative that they choose the correct approach or one of the nations’ most vital ecosystems will continue to disappear.