Indiana lost more than 260 acres of wetlands since rolling back protections | Hacker News Reader

Indiana lost more than 260 acres of wetlands since rolling back protections

wfyi.org

24 pointsDoreenMichele13 comments

260 acres since 2021 really isn’t all that much - and they appear to have built housing on it - and we don’t know how much wetlands Indiana was losing per year before the rollback of protections. So this article fundamentally doesn’t give me enough information to make a decision on. This is a shame because id be inclined to side with protecting wetlands if I felt I could make a fair judgement.

Instead what I know is that this website doesn’t like the rollback of protections, and the approximate maximal amount of water an acre of wetlands can hold. Thanks?

For context 260 acres is .00000713 of the total area of Indiana, or ~.00026% of the wetlands there.

Now, it could be that these are critically important "primary" type, housing endangered species, that might be an important consideration. It might also be important consider how many acres of wetland were gained in the recent past.

Also for context I tend to want more protections, not less.

260 acres in 2 years is utterly negligible at a state level

> Indiana is home to more than 800,000 acres of wetlands, equal to about 3.5% of the state's geography.Jul 26, 2023 [1]

This is just an attempt to create controversy.

[1] https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2023/07/26/indiana-lawma....

What percentage of wetland is it?

(I missed the wetlands text. Disregard)

With risk of dipping into politics, this is somewhat standard in the Indiana political landscape. Ignore externalities to get a quick buck, then complain when the externalities have consequences. Been happening for years, won't get better anytime soon.

Seems to be the norm for human history sadly

I smell lack of perspective. 260 acres is under 1/2 sq. mile. Indiana is ~36,000 square miles.

Or perhaps it's well-to-do NIMBYism? Drained wetlands sound like the sort of damp, fetid places where housing for the <shudder> lower classes might appear.

This is a rather alarmist way of saying 4/10ths of a square mile of swamp was drained. For reference Indiana has over 1200 square miles of wetlands.

Did they build housing on them or what?

260 acres is… nothing. Literally.

Practically speaking I agree, but it's a step backwards in that it's the direct consequence of legislation to remove extant environmental/habitat protections that were put in place by state/federal management agencies. This is not really dissimilar to legislatures in certain states that legislate policies that override hunting/fishing agencies recommendations due to public sentiment (NJ bear hunt ban or the bill in Wisconsin legislature trying to increase quotas for wolf harvest).

Conservation, habitat and environmental protection should, by nature, be managed on longer scales than what election driven and political legislatures are capable of.

Um, that is like nothing.

Where did they go? Did they become usable land?

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