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By John Parker

Sometimes I come up with more questions than I can seem to find answers. Call them "head scratchers" if you will.

What I’m referring to is the relationship between wetlands and the West Nile virus. Many wetlands are swamps, bogs and marshes that have standing water. Are these not great places for mosquitoes to breed? And we know mosquitoes are carriers for the West Nile virus.

We’re asked to do everything we can to eliminate standing water around our property. Yet we encourage the wetlands. Draining them is a serious offense.

Yes, environmentalists and others say that wetlands are an essential part of our environment. Where are the scientific, research-backed studies that prove the value of wetlands? I’ve asked this question of a lot of people and don’t get any good factual answers.

A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to spend some time with an individual who is with the United States Department of Agriculture working out of Washington, D.C. We were talking about wetlands, and he said we have preserved about a million acres of them in this country at a cost of about a billion dollars. Then I asked him what is the economic value of preserving wetlands. His answer was that, other than some folks charging fees for hunters and others who put up deer and duck blinds, there isn’t much real economic value to them.

Let’s take this one step further. Yes, getting rid of standing water around our homes and farms is important. But isn’t that kind of like using a teacup to eliminate mosquito breeding areas when we have the many swamps, marshes and bogs that exist?

Is the potential loss of life and serious illnesses we are seeing in this country from West Nile Virus worth preserving wetlands? Should we be spending millions to preserve them and then more millions to control mosquitoes?

These are all serious questions on my part. If wetlands are really all that important, then surely there are scientific studies that prove that point. Perhaps someone can help me find them.

No this column may not be popular among environmentalists, but these are honest questions on my part. If there are good, factual research-based answers to my questions, I would like to see them. What I’m driving at here is, we need to question some of the decisions we make in this country that impact all of us. Are these decisions based on sound science or junk science? Are we using emotions not facts to make certain decisions?

So I come back to the strange situation of spending billions to preserve wetlands and millions more to control the mosquitoes that breed in them. Somehow I can’t quite figure it out. Can you?

Parker is county information coordinator for Ashtabula and Trumbull counties and contributes regular columns to local newspapers.