WHAT LIVES IN WETLANDS?
When you enter a wetlands habitat, you are entering an environment that supports thousands of plants, hundreds of birds, and almost all of the fish and shellfish that we consume. Permanent residents of wetlands in the Intermountain West include algae, bacteria, and other micro-organisms; animals such as the mosquito, dragonfly, and numerous aquatic insects, plus toads, the leopard frog, tiger salamander, pupfish, crayfish, beaver, muskrat; plants such as sedges and bulrushes, berry bushes, shrub willows, and cottonwoods. Seasonal residents include the American peregrine falcon, the whooping crane, ducks, geese, swans, numerous sparrows and warblers, bitterns, avocets, black-necked stilts, deer, elk, black bear, brown bear, bald eagle, osprey, trout, and salmon. RARE SPECIES AND WETLANDS Almost half of the threatened and endangered species in the United States rely directly or indirectly on wetlands for their survival. In Idaho, for example, 49 species of rare plants and 29 species of r
