Editorial: Federal report all wet

Monday, April 3, 2006 | 8 a.m.

It takes a creative mind - or a highly manipulative one - to characterize an artificial golf course pond as a wetland.

In a report released last week, the Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service said that the United States has had a net gain of 191,800 acres of wetlands since the agency's last inventory in 1997. The increase is largely due to the increase in construction of storm- and waste-water retention ponds and the ornamental ponds built for golf courses and housing developments.

Only the Bush administration, which said hatchery-raised salmon should be counted when considering the wild salmon for Endangered Species Act protection, could consider a golfer's water trap and a wetland as being synonymous.

Of course, President Bush's ability to entirely miss the big picture is legendary. This is the man who in May 2003 stood below a banner declaring "Mission Accomplished" and said all major combat in Iraq had ended. More than 2,100 U.S. soldiers have died there since. He denies global warming exists, when North America's glaciers are melting before our very eyes. He says New Orleans' levees don't look so bad after all, though much of the city remains in ruins.

The fact that Bush and his administrators fail to see the difference between a naturally occurring wetland that sustains life and a concrete-lined pond that merely imitates it doesn't come as a surprise. It is but one more disappointment.