21st Century Challenges
Project results are starting to show that the Breaux Act has been an innovative catalyst for coastal restoration nationwide. The National Coastal Wetlands Grant Program and the component of the North American Wetlands Conservation Act funded by the Breaux Act ensure a strong foundation for continued wetland conservation and the benefits wetlands provide to fish, wildlife, and the American people. • The Breaux Act in Louisiana has been extremely successful in leading many federal, state, and private efforts to develop an integrated, comprehensive, system-wide approach to wetland restoration. Large-scale feasibility studies will be paramount in setting the future course of major restoration projects. The unprecedented monitoring program will provide an invaluable record of program effectiveness as well as the feedback needed to fine-tune restoration efforts.
Although projects approved under the eight priority lists will be designed, constructed, and monitored over the next 20 years, authorization of the Breaux Act itself will end September 30, 1999 unless extended by Congress. The anticipated benefits of over 73,000 wetland acres created, protected, or restored over 20 years in Louisiana exceed those of similar efforts in other coastal areas of the nation, and additional restoration will be achieved with projects authorized via the remaining two priority lists. But if the rate of 25-35 square miles of Louisiana's coastal wetlands lost each year continues, hundreds of thousands of acres could be lost during that same time. Loss of that magnitude indicates that a larger-scale restoration effort is clearly needed to sustain the ecologic and economic productivity of the nation's largest coastal wetland complex.
Making that effort is the challenge facing us as we greet the 21st century.