SCOTUS ruling

SCOTUS Ruling Defies Science

Confronted by climate breakdown and biodiversity loss, ecologists turn for solutions to one of the world’s most threatened ecosystems – wetlands.

Marshes, bogs, fens, swamps, potholes and sloughs; rising, falling, disappearing, reappearing, in tandem with adjacent streams, rivers, lakes and sea shores. Their waxing and waning is key to their productivity.

Indeed, wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems on the planet – accounting for up to 15% of terrestrial productivity, and home to a wide array of living creatures.

Wetland soils and sediments are also a huger carbon sink. Over half of the planet’s soil carbon is stored there.

But Earth’s wetlands are under threat. A third have been lost since 1970 – three times faster than forests. Now, a US Supreme Court ruling places American wetlands in even greater peril.

This past May, in an opinion authored by Samuel Alito, SCOTUS ruled that America’s Clean Water Act extends only to those “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right,” that are “indistinguishable” from those waters,” and that are permanent.

Justice Alito’s ruling flies in the face of wetland science. So say two authorities on wetland function and surface water law. Mažeika Sulliván is a Professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation and Director of the Baruch Institute for Coastal Ecology and Forest Science at Clemson University, in Clemson, South Carolina.

Royal Gardner is a Professor of Law, and Co-Director of the Institute for Biodiversity Law and Policy, at Stetson University, in Tampa Bay Florida.

The GPM spoke with Sulliván and Royal. Listen to our conversation here: