Many of the worst things done to the environment throughout history were done without knowledge of their harmful effects. When Europeans first started colonizing the Americas, they saw the new lands as resources to use for their benefit. At the time, the standard in Europe regarding land was that if land was not usable for agricultural purposes, it was useless. This standard was simply based on a lack of proper knowledge that would come out years later. One of the biggest mistakes that these settlers made was draining the salt marshes.

Before the settlers arrived, Native Americans occupied the land, and were very respectful. They came from societies that focused on hunting and gathering, and a lot of Native American beliefs were based on respect and love for nature. The natives took only what they needed from nature and always made sure to “give back” by performing ceremonies to honor nature. European society was very different, and to them, respect for land and nature was a rare quality. They used the land somewhat carelessly because they needed it for survival. It was no surprise that when they started settling in the Americas they needed arable land as quickly as possible.

Salt marshes, seemingly useless to the first settlers, are actually an extremely productive ecosystem. Various organisms depend upon salt marshes for all or part of their lives, and salt marshes produce more basic food energy per acre than any other known ecosystem. Salt marshes also keep natural water clean by filtering out sediments, nutrients, and other toxins from upland runoff. The European settlers of course had no idea the harm they were causing when draining these salt marshes – they were simply trying to survive. They had an agriculture-based lifestyle, and destroying the salt marshes provided easily accessible land to serve their purposes. It would be unfair to blame them completely for the damages they caused to the ecosystem during this time because they simply did not know any better. Though the side effects were extremely harmful, it was probably not intentional in any way. The environmental cost of creating arable land was unknown to them at the time, and they were simply doing what they needed to get by.

There is no excuse however, for the continued destruction of salt marshes today. Since the mid 1900’s we have been aware of the damage we inflict by destroying salt marshes. We continue to learn more and more about how precious our ecosystem is and how important it is for the future of our planet to preserve it. However, we have continually contributed to the destruction of salt marshes, along with other natural resources, to make room for our industrialized society. These behaviors should not be tolerated, especially since we now have knowledge about how harmful this is for the environment, which the European settlers did not have. Somehow we still manage to eat away at our natural resources and destroy our planet even with this knowledge that our ancestors lacked.

We can blame whomever we’d like for the destruction of salt marshes, but in reality were just blaming ourselves. It’s now our job, being more educated, to put a stop to the destruction of our planet’s natural resources and work to fix the destruction we’ve caused in the past.