The health, diversity, and integrity of Rhode Island's ecosystems will be restored, protected, enhanced and sustained.
Preserving Rhode Island's natural habitats within their component ecosystems is central to the Department's strategy to maintain the state's unique quality of life. Activities from outdoor recreation to commercial fishing depend on healthy ecosystems that can sustain our fish and wildlife resources. Our forests contribute to erosion control and clean air. Wetlands and coastal dunes protect upland properties from storm damage and erosion. Wetlands also store and spread out stormwater during heavy rains, preventing flood damage while filtering pollutants from storm water.
The Department, works with many partners to manage, preserve, and restore plant, animal, and aquatic species. Protecting and restorating terrestrial and aquatic habitat, protecting open space to establish corridors for wildlife, better watershed management, and growth planning preserve a variety of natural areas and wildlife for commercial and recreational use.
Rhode Island habitats are particularly vulnerable due to the state's small size and advanced stage of urbanization. Fresh and salt water systems and wetlands have been degraded by industrial pollution, bacterial contamination, and excess nutrients. About 23% of the 1300 known native plant species in Rhode Island are becoming rare or are threatened or endangered. Similarly, 28% of the state's native vertebrate species, including mammals, fish, and birds, are rare or endangered. Eelgrass beds, valuable nursery and feeding grounds for commercial and recreational fish species, have been reduced to about one hundred acres. Approximately 4,000 acres of Narragansett Bay have been filled over the past 300 years. Restoring critical habitats, including wetlands, is vital to restoring native plant and wildlife species.
Coastal and Freshwater Ecosystems
and Habitat Restoration
A bill introduced by the late Sen. John Chafee would authorize over $300 million for restoration projects over three years. Under the Chafee bill the federal money will go only to states that have adopted restoration program legislation and matching state funds to pay for 35 percent of each project. The Department also pooled resources with twenty-one partners to match $3 million in North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) funds from the North Cape oil spill settlement, generating $13,454,515 to protect 2,370 acres of critical wetland and upland habitat in Rhode Island.
Other activities in 1999 include enforcement actions that led to restoration of 40,000 square feet of pond, 200,375 square feet of swamp, and 335,412 square feet of regulated perimeter wetland. DEM also started the South Shore Habitat Inventory and completed the Narragansett Bay Habitat Inventory in cooperation with Save the Bay and the City of Warwick. On a larger scale, the Department began the Narragansett Coastal Wetland Restoration Analysis Inventory with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, UMass and URI. DEM also continued to participate in the Narragansett Bay Cooperative Study with the National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, URI, Roger Williams University, and the Narragansett Bay Estuarine Research Reserve.