How Much Estuary Habitat Have We Lost? Habitat in estuaries has been destroyed over the past 100 years with little regard for its many economic values and quality-of-life benefits. Population growth in coastal watersheds; dredging, draining, bulldozing and paving; pollution; dams; sewage discharges -- these and other impacts from human activities have led to the extensive loss and continuing destruction of estuary habitat. For example, in our coastal states, more than half (roughly 55 million acres) of wetlands have been destroyed.

Across the nation, habitat loss looks like this:

• Puget Sound
  73% of the original salt marshes have been destroyed;
• Narragansett Bay
  70% of salt marshes are being cut off from full tidal flow and 50% have been filled;
• San Francisco Bay
  95% of its original wetlands have been destroyed; only 300 of the original 6,000 miles of stream habitat in the Central Valley support spawning salmon;
• Galveston Bay
  85% of seagrass meadows;
• Louisiana Estuaries
  Continues to lose 25,000 acres annually of coastal marshes, roughly the size of Washington, DC;
• Hudson-Raritan Estuary
  75% of the original tidal marshes have been destroyed in both New York and New Jersey, and 99% of New York's fresh wetlands are gone;
• Chesapeake Bay
  90% of seagrass meadows were destroyed by 1990; in 30 years (1959-89), oyster harvest fell from 25 million pounds to 1 million;
• Long Island Sound
  More than 40% of the Sound's tidal wetlands have been destroyed;
• Gulf of Maine
  Since 1975, developed land in the lower watershed has doubled;
• North Carolina Estuaries
  The state has lost more wetlands than any other state from 1973 to 1983; and
• Tampa Bay
  80% of seagrass meadows destroyed.

For the most part, the loss in each estuary is an accumulation of small development and other projects. The destruction of estuary habitat is surprising in its extent and severity, amounting to tens of millions of acres destroyed. Estuaries will suffer "death from a thousand cuts" if this loss of habitat is not stopped and reversed now.