Southeastern NEWS

                                                       Southeastern Louisiana University
                                           Public Information Office
                                           publicinfo@selu.edu
                                           SLU 880, Hammond, LA 70402
                                           504/549-2341/fax 504-549-2061
    Date: 8/9/00
      Contact:                           Christina Chapple   12A

Editors: Photo accompanies release
SLU LAUNCHES CAMPAIGN TO PROTECT WORLD'S TEN LARGEST WETLANDS
     HAMMOND -- Most people would be surprised to discover that the world's largest
wetlands is not a tropical rainforest in South America, but a peat bog in Siberia.
     However, according to Southeastern Louisiana University wetlands ecologist Paul Keddy,
"one million kilometers (620,000 square miles) of peat bog, boggy forests and meadows in
western Siberia   an area the size of a small country" qualifies as the largest "wet and wild" area
of the globe. 
     That rainforest   specifically, the vast tropical swamp of the Amazon River floodplain  
is a close second, Keddy said.
     Keddy, who joined the Southeastern faculty in August 1999 as the Edward G. Schlieder
Chair in Environmental Studies, conducted a special program on "The World's Largest
Wetlands" on Aug. 7, during the Millennium Wetland Event, a worldwide scientific conference
in Quebec City, Canada, scheduled for Aug. 6-12.
     Keddy invited representatives of each of the "top 10" wetlands to present papers at the
Canadian program. The lists of scientists from the United States, South America, Russia,
Germany, Canada, Brazil, Chile, and China, included Keddy's Southeastern colleague Gary
Shaffer. Shaffer was scheduled to speak about the Mississippi Flood Plain, the wetlands area that
spans approximately 62,000 square miles from Ohio to the mouth of the Mississippi River. The
region, Keddy said, holds the number five spot on the top 10 list.
     Accompanying Keddy and Shaffer to the Canadian conference were  Southeastern
biologist Mark Hester, Keddy's executive assistant Michaelyn Broussard and research associate
Hallie Dozier.
                             (MORE)
WETLANDS -- Add One
     Keddy said information from the international wetlands program will be incorporated into
a book and a website to "kick start global awareness" of the need to protect the world's crucial
and delicate wetlands area.
     Keddy said he initially was surprised to find that no one had compiled a wetlands top 10
list. "When I started," he said, "I assumed that the work was already done and sitting in a book or
government publication or web site somewhere. In fact, we had to start from scratch, going
through books and scientific papers and refining our list down to the biggest 10." He and his staff
amassed 20 pages of references in compiling the list.
     In addition to the Western Siberian Lowlands in Eurasia, the Amazon River in South
America, and the Mississippi flood plain, Keddy's list includes: the Hudson Bay Lowlands
(peatlands); the Pantanal region in South America (marsh, swamp and floodplains); the Upper
Nile Swamps and the Chari-Logone floodplains, both in Africa; the Papua-New Guinea swamp
in Eurasia; the Zaire-Congo system in Africa, and the Upper Mackenzie River marsh and
floodplains in North America.
     The author of several books on wetlands ecology and plant competition, Keddy has spent
his first year as the Schlieder chair in teaching, planning new research, writing, and promoting
wetlands conservation.
     His writing projects have included a new book, "Wetland Ecology: Principles and
Conservation," which will be published this year by Cambridge University Press.      
     Keddy said each wetlands will have its own informational section on a web site he plans
to develop and base at Southeastern. "Since coming to Louisiana, I've been impressed with the
awareness and appreciation of wetlands that exists here," Keddy said. "Louisiana is really setting
a positive example. Now, we will try to repeat that on a global scale. If we want to protect
ecology, people have to know where these wetlands are.
     "My vision is that in 10-20 years, Louisiana  will actually be seen as a center for the study
of the world's wetlands," Keddy said.
                            - SLU -
Press release available online at www.selu.edu/NewsEvents/PublicInfoOffice/newsm00.htm