Quote:
Originally Posted by T-TOP
For a person to be forced to mitigate wetlands, what would he have to be doing?
Lets say my driveway, house, barn, and a riding arena equal 2 acres. This 2 acres i would be putting as dozer on and removing stumps etc... destroying wetlands.
Now lets say the other 8 acres. I clear underbrush and small trees with rubber tire tractors, cut some trees down with chainsaw and grind stumps. I have been told this is not destroying wetlands. no tracked equipment, no blades, no digging.
what do you guys know about this?
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It isn't like cap and trade because loss of wetlands can actually be measured, and cap and trade would have dealt with carbon offsets and there is still too much variability in the measures of carbon depending on who measured it and thats a whole different slice of bread there
If you put a building on top of a wetland, the wetland is still technically there, but the whole function of that wetland has ceased. Some of the 'brush' and vegetation you may be clearing are probably wetland plants that only occur in a wetland and can't grow anywhere else. I will digress, I think we all know the value of a wetland and it can't be justified in just a few paragraphs. Its much much greater than just a few plants lets just say that. There are very few places with as much plant diversity as a wetland. Plant diversity usually means animal diversity as well.
I can see where you are coming from though, and would probably have had the same reaction if I wanted to build and was unaware of the process. Its far from perfect (because the gov't is in charge of it
) but it is at least something to keep some natural areas around.
On the cap and trade thing, there are actually companies that are buying these carbon 'crediks' to show that they are a 'green' company by showing that their carbon emissions are at a net zero by planting trees to offset their carbon emissions. More power to them if thats what they want to do.