Wetlands save Wisconsin and the upper Midwest almost $23 billion per year that would otherwise be spent combating flooding, a new report has found.
And that comes as the loss of wetlands has accelerated, and critical protections have eased.
The report, out Wednesday from the Union of Concerned Scientists, relies on a figure from a 2022 American Economic Review paper to come up with that total: that one acre of wetland provides $745 in flood control benefits to residential properties across the U.S.
Read the rest of the story at Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.