On Earth Day 2004 President Bush set a historic precedent by establishing a goal of a net gain of wetlands targeting 3 million acres of restoration, enhancement and protection over the next five years. These gains will not be achieved through federal and state regulatory programs which are designed (at best) to achieve no net loss of wetlands altered through permitting. Rather it is the Conservation Title of the Farm Bill, the North American Waterfowl Conservation Act and other similar federal, state and local nonregulatory efforts that will restore and protect the acreage that will be applied toward achieving the President’s Goal. The President’s goal will direct greater scrutiny and higher accountability to ongoing protection and restoration efforts.

The purpose of this symposium was to examine the tools used at the national, state, and local level to measure wetlands status and trends. These include U.S/ FWS reports as well as the NRCS’ National Resources Inventory and mapping efforts such as the National Wetlands Inventory. Trends reports, functional assessment and high quality, updated wetland maps are essential tools to measuring progress towards net gain. This symposium addressed the complex challenges inherent in measuring changes in wetland acreage.

For many years one of the most difficult aspects of wetlands regulation and management has been cumulative losses. The loss of numerous small and large wetlands over time has profound impacts on watershed hydrology which in turn impacts biodiversity, flood retention, water quality maintenance and other important wetland and water shed functions. Assessing the importance and effects of cumulative losses—i.e., what wetland losses mean in the aggregate as well as on an individual basis--has posed s significant challenge for regulators as well as restoration program managers. The Federal Agencies’ National Mitigation Action Plan is moving the Section 404 program towards a "watershed approach" in part to address cumulative impacts. This symposium examined current approaches to addressing cumulative impacts and identify useful future directions.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working in collaboration with states, federal agencies and others to develop regional supplemental criteria to refine the Corps 87 Wetlands Delineation Manual.  A regionalized approach is undergoing peer review and field testing Alaska and another similar project is underway in the arid west.  The Corps has set some general priorities for developing supplemental material for the remainder of the country.  Many state wetland programs, both regulatory and nonregulatory, reference the Corps’ 87 wetlands Delineation manual as the basis for delineating wetlands to carry out state programs. This symposium described ongoing cooperative efforts to regionalize the manual and provide the opportunity for discussion on the issues that might need to be addressed in other areas of the country to further improve the application of good science to wetlands delineation.